[ad_1]
US prosecutors have charged three members of an eastern European criminal organization with ties to the Iranian government with conspiring to kill journalists and activists who are American citizens, Attorney General Merrick Garland said Friday.
Rafat Amirov, Polad Omarov and Khalid Mehdiyev were charged with murder-for-hire and money laundering for their roles in the foiled Tehran-backed plot, the US Justice Department said in a statement.
“Casualties are announced [the] The Iranian government’s human rights violations, discriminatory treatment of women, suppression of democratic participation, and expression, and use of arbitrary imprisonment, torture and execution,” Garland said.
Garland did not name the alleged victims, but Mehdiyev was arrested last year in New York for having a gun outside the Brooklyn home of journalist Masih Alinejad, a longtime critic of Iran’s headscarf law who has promoted videos of women breaking the law on social media. the media.
WATCH | The Fifth Estate – The Dissidents:
We spoke to Iranian dissidents in Canada and the US who the FBI says the regime is targeting.
Iran’s mission to the UN did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
US prosecutors in 2021 charged four Iranians who allegedly acted as intelligence operatives for Tehran in a plot to kidnap New York-based journalists and activists. While the target of the plot was not named, Reuters confirmed that he was Alinejad.
“This is the second time in the last two years that this office and our partners at the FBI have disrupted a plot originating in Iran to kidnap or kill this victim for the ‘crime’ of exercising the right to free speech, to independent political thought, and to support the rights of suppressed and revoked in Iran,” US Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement.
Amirov was arrested on Thursday and will be arraigned in federal court in Manhattan on Friday. Omarov was arrested in the Czech Republic earlier this month.
Mehdiyev pleaded not guilty to one count of possessing a firearm with an obliterated serial number. He is being held at the Brooklyn Metropolitan Detention Center awaiting trial.
“The alleged actions show the extent to which Iranian actors are willing to silence their critics, even attempting to kill US citizens on American soil,” FBI director Christopher Wray said in a statement.
I just learned from 12 FBI agents that 3 people hired by the Iranian regime to kill me on US soil have been indicted. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has been conducting this terrorist operation for four decades.
The Islamic Republic is ISIS with oil. #WomanLifeFreedom pic.twitter.com/T9Hbp0iwG3
CBC’s Fifth Estate has previously described an alleged attempt to target Iranian dissidents in Canada.
Alinejad previously spoke to CBC Power & Politics about the target, characterizing it as “like a horror movie.”
Alinejad confirmed in a social media post on Friday that she was informed of the latest plan and thanked the FBI.
But he urged the US government to stand firm against Iran after the mass arrests and several executions it has caused in recent months, following widespread protests over the death of Mahsa Amini in custody last September.
The United States in 2011 arrested one man it said was linked to an Iranian plot to kill Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to Washington at the time at a restaurant he frequented in the capital.
Washington accuses Tehran of supporting terrorism and pursuing nuclear weapons, which Iran denies.
[ad_2]
Source link