U.S. prosecutors have charged three members of an Eastern European criminal organization with ties to Iran’s government with conspiring to assassinate a journalist and activist who is an American citizen, Attorney General Merrick Garland said on Friday. Rafat Amirov, Polad Omarov and Khalid Mehdiyev were charged with murder-for-hire and money laundering for their role in the thwarted Tehran-backed plot, the Department of Justice said in a statement. The Associated Press has the story:
US charges 3 in plot to kill Iranian-American author
Newslooks- WASHINGTON (AP)
The Justice Department has charged three men in a plot to kill an Iranian American author and activist who has spoken out against human rights abuses in Iran, officials said Friday.
The three defendants who were charged are, Rafat Amirov, 43, of Iran, Polad Omarov, 38, of the Czech Republic and Slovenia and Khalid Mehdiyev, 24, of Yonkers, New York, were charged with money laundering and murder-for-hire in a superseding indictment unsealed in federal court in New York.
It is the second time in two years that federal officials have disrupted a plot aimed at the unnamed victim in New York City.
“Today’s unsealing shows that just one year after the FBI and our partners disrupted an Iranian group’s attempt to silence an American journalist on U.S. soil, the same person was targeted for assassination again, by a group with ties to Iran. Fortunately, their plot failed because we didn’t,” said FBI Director Christopher Wray at a press conference announcing the indictment.
The 25-page indictment, unsealed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, says the three men were enlisted last year to murder an American citizen of Iranian origin on U.S. soil. The person, who was not identified by the Justice Department, wrote critically about Iran’s treatment of women, protesters and other issues, the indictment said.
