Iran critic in U.S. targeted by murder plot, DOJ says

Three members of an Eastern European crime group have been arrested for a murder-for-hire plot that targeted a U.S. journalist and human rights activist of Iranian origin who has been a prominent critic of Iran, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced Friday. 

One of the men, 24-year-old New York resident Khalid Mediyev, was apprehended in July with an AK-47-style assault rifle near the victim’s home in Brooklyn as he was about to “execute the attack on the victim,” according to an indictment unsealed Friday in Manhattan federal court.

The same victim had been the target of an earlier kidnapping plot, which led to the indictment in 2021 of four people who have ties to Iranian intelligence, authorities said.

Masih Alinejad, an exiled Iranian journalist, identified herself in 2021 as the target of the kidnapping plot. Alinejad did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

But in a tweet Friday, she wrote, “I just learned from 12 FBI agents that the 3 men hired by the Iranian regime to kill me on US soil have been indicted.”

“The Islamic Revolutionary Guards have been conducting these terrorist operations for four decades. Islamic Republic is ISIS with oil,” she wrote in the tweet, which included a video lasting more than two minutes.

“This is the face of a person who was a target of an assassination plot,” she said on the video. “Let me make it clear: I’m not scared for my life.”

“Because I knew that killing, assassinating, hanging, torturing, raping is in the DNA of the Islamic Republic. And that’s why I came to the United States of America, to practice my right, my freedom of expression, to give voice to brave people of Iran who say no to the Islamic Republic.”

National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, in a statement, said, “The law enforcement action today is the latest U.S. disruption of plotting activities against this victim and other Americans.”

“It follows a disturbing pattern of Iranian Government-sponsored efforts to kill, torture, and intimidate into silence activists for speaking out for the fundamental rights and freedoms of Iranians around the world,” Sullivan said,

The latest plot began in 2022, when members of the Eastern European crime organization known as “Thieves-in-Law,” who had ties to Iran were enlisted to assassinate the victim, according to an indictment, which does not identify the victim by name.

That group’s participation in the plot was directed by a man named Rafat Amirov, the group’s leader, who lives in Iran and “who was tasked with targeting the Victim by individuals in Iran,” according to the indictment, which was unsealed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.

Amirov, 43, was taken into custody on Thursday in New York.

In addition to him and Mediyev, who lives in Yonkers, the other man charged was Polad Omarov, who was arrested January 4 in the Czech Republic, where he lives. Omarov also lives in Slovenia.

The indictment says that Amirov directed Omarov, who is a member of the crime group, in the plot to kill the journalist.

Omarov, in turn, directed Mehdiyev “to carry out the plot against the victim,” the indictment says.

Amirov and Omarov arranged for $30,000 in cash to be paid to Mehdiyev, who then obtained the rifle, according to that charging document.

Mehdiyev, at the instructions of the other men, surveilled the target and members of her family and took photos and videos of her home and the surrounding neighborhood, the indictment says.

He also “devised a scheme to lure the Victim out of the Victim’s house,” according to the indictment.

When he was arrested near the target’s home, the assault rifle he had was found to have an obliterated serial number, the indictment says.

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