Trial Begins Over a Plot to Kill an Iranian Dissident in NYC

By: Larry Neumeister

Two men charged in an alleged Iranian government-sponsored plot to kill a prominent Iranian journalist and human rights activist went on trial Monday as a federal judge in New York City assured prospective jurors that “nobody got killed.”

The men, alleged members of an Eastern European crime group with ties to Iran, were charged in January 2023 with plotting in 2022 to murder Masih Alinejad, an author and contributor to Voice of America who fled Iran following the country’s disputed 2009 presidential election.

Alinejad, who became a U.S. citizen in October 2019, is scheduled to testify during the trial that she has repeatedly been targeted by the Iranian government. Alinejad, who has confirmed that she was the intended target of the plot, is referred to in court documents only as the “Victim.” She declined a request to comment Monday.

Judge Colleen McMahon told a pool of just over 100 prospective jurors in Manhattan that the trial of Rafat Amirov and Polad Omarov would last less than three weeks. The men are natives of Azerbaijan, which shares a border and cultural ties with Iran.

She described the charges against the men, which included a murder-for-hire count and a conspiracy charge related to the murder-for-hire plot, before telling jurors: “Nobody got killed.”

“There was, in fact, no murder,” the judge added. “Nobody got hurt.”

Then she noted that the men, who each stood with their lawyers as they were introduced to prospective jurors, had pleaded not guilty.

“And they are presumed to be not guilty,” McMahon said.

During the trial, prosecutors plan to introduce witnesses, including experts, to tell jurors that the government of Iran has long targeted political dissidents living outside Iran and continued to do so when Alinejad spoke out.

In the first line of its indictment, the U.S. government said the government or 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.”

The judge has ruled she’ll allow a small amount of testimony on the subject but believed that “reams of evidence about 45 years of Iranian state-sponsored vendettas against its citizens abroad” was unfair to the defendants, neither of whom are citizens of Iran or members of Iranian intelligence.

She said it will be enough that jurors will hear “a substantial amount of very inflammatory evidence” directly related to the charges against the men.

Prior to trial, McMahon ruled in a written order that the jury is entitled to hear that Alinejad was the subject of repeated threats from the government of Iran, “if only to understand why Iranian nationals residing in Iran and affiliated with intelligence services would target her, a resident of the United States.”

In court papers, prosecutors have said that Iranian government officials in 2018 offered money to Alinejad’s relatives living in Iran to induce them to invite Alinejad to a foreign country, where she could be arrested and transported to Iran for imprisonment.

Prosecutors also said in court papers that an Iranian government intelligence service in June 2020 plotted to kidnap Alinejad in the United States “for rendition to Iran and likely execution.” Federal authorities exposed the plot in July 2021 with an indictment charging an Iranian intelligence officer and three Iranian intelligence assets with kidnapping conspiracy and other crimes, although those defendants remain at large.

(AP)