Prosecutors claim the suspects, allegedly members of an Eastern European crime group linked to Iran, were hired to carry out a murder on US soil in 2022.
ADVERTISEMENTTwo men accused of involvement in an Iranian government plan to assassinate a prominent Iranian-American journalist and human rights activist went on trial in New York on Monday.
The two defendants, Rafat Amirov and Polad Omarov, are alleged to be members of an Eastern European crime syndicate with links to Iran.
Prosecutors charged them in January 2023 with conspiring to murder Masih Alinejad, a journalist, author, and contributor to Voice of America who fled Iran following the country’s contested 2009 presidential election.
Alinejad has confirmed she was the intended target, and is expected to testify during the trial about repeated threats she has faced from the Iranian government.
Addressing more than 100 prospective jurors at the Manhattan court, Judge Colleen McMahon explained that the trial would last less than three weeks and outlined the charges, which include murder-for-hire and conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire.
«Nobody got killed,» McMahon told jurors. «There was, in fact, no murder. Nobody got hurt.»
She also reminded the court that both Amirov and Omarov had pleaded not guilty and remained presumed innocent until proven otherwise.
Dissidents in the crosshairs
During the trial, prosecutors intend to call expert witnesses to testify that the Iranian government has long targeted political dissidents abroad, including Alinejad, for kidnapping or assassination.
The US government’s indictment states that Iran “is actively targeting nationals of the United States and its allies living in countries around the world for kidnapping and/or execution, in order to repress and silence dissidents critical of the Iranian regime”.
Judge McMahon has ruled that while limited testimony about Iran’s history of targeting dissidents will be allowed, extensive evidence about “45 years of Iranian state-sponsored vendettas” would be unfair to the defendants, who are not Iranian citizens or members of Iranian intelligence.
However, she confirmed that jurors will hear “a substantial amount of very inflammatory evidence” directly tied to the charges.
According to prosecutors, Tehran has long pursued Alinejad specifically. In 2018, Iranian officials reportedly offered money to her relatives in Iran to lure her to a third country where she could be arrested and extradited to Iran, but her family refused to comply.
Court documents also show that in 2020, Iranian intelligence services orchestrated a plan to kidnap Alinejad in the US and forcibly return her to Iran for execution.
According to the indictment, Amirov, described as a leader of an Eastern European criminal organisation, was asked to target Alinejad by unnamed individuals. He then contacted Omarov, who was based in Eastern Europe.
The two men are accused of hiring a New York-based individual, offering $30,000 (€27,500) to carry out the attack on Alinejad, whose activism has encouraged Iranian women to defy the country’s hijab laws by filming themselves without head coverings.
ADVERTISEMENTThe plot was ultimately foiled when Alinejad left her home after noticing suspicious activity. New York police officers later arrested the hired hitman, discovering he was in possession of a gun, ammunition magazines, cash, and a black ski mask.
