Politics
Two Men Are Convicted in Plot to Kill Iranian Dissident in New York City
The convictions brought some measure of resolution to what U.S. officials have described as an unrelenting retaliation effort against Masih Alinejad.
For nearly a decade, people with ties to Iran’s government have been accused of plotting to kidnap or murder Masih Alinejad, a journalist and dissident who left the country in 2009 and an impassioned critic of its leaders.
On Thursday, a jury in Manhattan returned guilty verdicts in the first criminal case stemming from those attempts to go to trial.
Two members of the Russian mob, who prosecutors said had plotted to kill Ms. Alinejad at the behest of a network in Iran that included a brigadier general in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, were found guilty in Federal District Court of offenses including murder for hire and conspiracy.
Key evidence against the men, Rafat Amirov and Polad Omarov, came from a third member of the mob who was arrested in 2022 with an AK-47-style assault rifle after the authorities said he had stepped onto Ms. Alinejad’s porch in Brooklyn and tried to enter her home.
That man, Khalid Mehdiyev, said on the stand that Mr. Omarov had sent him to kill Ms. Alinejad. He also testified that Mr. Amirov later spoke with him while they were both in federal custody and admitted that he, too, had been part of the plot.
The conviction of Mr. Amirov and Mr. Omarov brought some measure of resolution to what U.S. officials have described as an unrelenting retaliation effort against an Iranian dissident who had agitated for women’s rights from abroad.
