At trial’s start, prosecutor blames Iran for plot to assassinate outspoken dissident

NEW YORK — Two members of an Eastern European criminal organization were “hired guns for the government of Iran” in a plot to assassinate an Iran-born journalist at her New York City residence three years ago, a prosecutor told a federal jury in an opening statement on Tuesday at the start of a trial for the men.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Jacob Gutwillig said the plot to assassinate Masih Alinejad was part of Iran’s more than decade-long quest to silence a woman who exposed the Iranian regime for human rights abuses and for silencing political expression.

The prosecutor told jurors they will hear the author and contributor to Voice of America explain why the government of Iran wanted to silence her.

Alinejad fled Iran following the country’s disputed 2009 presidential election and became a U.S. citizen in October 2019. She will describe why she stands up to the Iranian regime, Gutwillig said, and why she “refuses to back down.”

“Masih Alinejad inspires others in Iran and around the world to do the same thing. That is why they want to kill her. And you will hear all of that from Ms. Alinejad herself,” he said.

On trial on a murder-for-hire count and other charges are Rafat Amirov and Polad Omarov, natives of Azerbaijan, which shares a border and cultural ties with Iran.

The prosecutor told jurors that key testimony will come from the man hired to kill Alinejad: Khalid Mahdiyev of Yonkers.

Detective Daniel Smith, the trial’s first witness, said Mahdiyev was arrested in July 2022 when he ran a stop sign in Alinejad’s neighborhood and was found to be driving despite a suspended driver’s license. A search of his car turned up a loaded AK-47 assault rifle, Smith said.

Defense attorneys for Amirov and Omarov told jurors in opening statements that their clients were not guilty and that prosecutors’ evidence was merely circumstantial.

Attorney Michael Martin, representing Amirov, said his client had insisted for the 25 months since his January 2023 arrest that he was not guilty.

He promised to discredit the testimony of Mahdiyev, calling him a “murderer, a kidnapper, an arsonist, a robber, an extortionist, a scammer, a fraudster and a liar.”

“That,” he added, “will be undisputed.”

Attorney Michael Perkins, representing Omarov, called his client a “scam artist” who had conned the Iranian government out of a lot of money.

“To earn that money, he did as close to nothing as possible,” Perkins said. “Mr. Omarov had no intention, no agreement, with anyone to kill Ms. Alinejad.”

Gutwillig said the government of Iran had long attacked Alinejad, smearing her reputation, imprisoning her brother and trying to kidnap her and bring her back to Iran in 2020. He said Iranian officials then agreed to the $500,000 assassination plot with the two men who wanted to make money and enhance their positions in their organized crime group.

“The defendants were hired guns for the government of Iran,” he said.

He said Alinejad became a target of Iran after encouraging women in Iran to share messages and videos of women protesting the regime by refusing to wear head coverings, or hijabs, in public in Iran, subjecting them to arrest or beatings by the country’s morality police.

“She shared them with millions. She shined a light on the government of Iran’s oppression of women, and that enraged the regime” Gutwillig said.

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