Prosecutors point finger at Iran in trial over foiled assassination plot

MANHATTAN (CN) — Two men charged in a failed plot to assassinate journalist and Iranian exile Masih Alinejad had planned to “gun her down at home, right here in New York City,” prosecutors told a Manhattan jury on Tuesday, until they were foiled by law enforcement the day of the attack.

Rafat Amirov and Polad Omarov, purported members of the Russian gang “Thieves in Law,” are standing trial for setting the murder for hire in motion. According to U.S. prosecutors, they did so on behalf of the Iranian government, which agreed to pay the duo $500,000 to make it happen.

The trial kicked off Tuesday with Assistant U.S. Attorney Jacob Gutwillig describing Amirov and Omarov as career criminals who in July 2022 “took on a new contract to kill a journalist in New York City.”

That journalist was Alinejad, a Brooklyn resident who was exiled from her home nation of Iran for speaking out against its morality police, the law enforcement body tasked with ensuring that Iranian women comply with the nation’s mandatory hijab laws. That “enraged the regime,” Gutwillig said during his opening argument, and resulted in it “desperately” wanting her dead.

“The government of Iran has targeted her for over a decade,” the prosecutor argued, calling the defendants “hired guns for the government of Iran.”

Investigators say Iranian officials turned to Amirov and Omarov after failing to lure Alinejad to Turkey to kidnap her there. Once assigned the task, Amirov and Omarov outsourced the job to a third man based in New York, Khalid Mehdiyev, who spent about a week following her every movement and reporting back to the two men abroad, Gutwillig said.

He claimed that Mehdiyev stalked her, taking note of “where she got her coffee, when she watered her flowers.”

On July 29, 2022, Mehdiyev was preparing to “finish the job,” as prosecutors say Amirov and Omarov had instructed. Unfortunately for them, Mehdiyev blew a stop sign while patrolling the hit and was pulled over by NYPD officers.

They arrested Mehdiyev for driving with an expired license. Inside his car, cops found a loaded AK-47 with a bullet in the chamber, 66 rounds of ammunition packed into two magazines, a ski mask, multiple license plates and around $1,100 in cash.

NYPD Officer Daniel Smith, who arrested Mehdiyev, testified Tuesday that it looked like the would-be assassin had spent a significant amount of time in the car.

“It was messy,” Smith said. “There was a lot of garbage, food containers in there.”

Mehdiyev was charged in the murder-for-hire scheme alongside Amirov and Omarov, but flipped on his co-defendants and agreed to testify for the government. Gutwillig told jurors he’ll give a “terrifying inside view” into the details of the plot.

Mehdiyev did just that on Tuesday afternoon, when he told the jurors that on the day of his Brooklyn arrest in 2022: “I was there to try to kill the journalist.”

The self-proclaimed mobster testified that he arrived in New York City in 2017 after fleeing his home country of Azerbaijan due to a “beef” with a rival Russian group. Mehdiyev said his visa status was nearly in jeopardy when he stabbed one of his rivals prior to leaving Azerbaijan, but he paid off local law enforcement to cover it up.

“In my country if you do those kinds of crimes you can cover it with the money,” he said.

Mehdiyev said that he continued to commit crimes, including thrice setting fire to a restaurant to extort its owner, on behalf of his criminal organization when he came to the United States. He said he used apps like WhatsApp and Telegram to carry out his crimes because “it’s hard to track those apps.”

He didn’t get into details of the Alinejad assassination attempt before court was adjourned for the day. But he’s expected to testify on Wednesday that he was directed to stalk and shoot the journalist at the direction of Amirov and Omarov.

Lawyers for Amirov and Omarov urged the jury to take Mehdiyev’s expected testimony with a grain of salt.

Amirov’s attorney Michael Martin called Mehdiyev a murderer, arsonist, scammer, fraudster and liar during his opening. Martin claimed there is no credible evidence tying his client to Mehdiyev’s actions, and that the only reason Mehdiyev decided to cooperate with prosecutors was to spare himself from a decadeslong prison sentence.

“A few embellishments and lies will be easy for Mr. Mehdiyev,” Martin argued.

Michael Perkins, an attorney for Omarov, called Mehdiyev “a witness you wouldn’t buy a used car from.”

Also expected to testify is Alinejad herself, who Gutwillig said drew the ire of Iranian officials when she spearheaded a social media campaign to encourage women in the country not to wear hijabs. “She will explain why the government of Iran wanted to silence her,” he said.

Amirov and Omarov pleaded not guilty to all charges in relation to the plot, including murder for hire and attempted murder in aid of racketeering. Ruhollah Bazghandi, a senior member in Iran’s Revolutionary guard, is also charged in the scheme, accused of hiring Amirov and Omarov in the first place. He remains at large.

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