US arrests three in Iran-backed plot to assassinate journalist Masih Alinejad

The US Justice Department announced Friday the arrests of three people who allegedly took part in a Tehran-backed plot to assassinate dissident Iranian journalist Masih Alinejad.

Two of those arrested were members of an Eastern European organized crime group with ties to Iran who were recruited to arrange Alinejad’s murder in New York, said Attorney General Merrick Garland.

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 victim publicized (the) Iranian government’s human rights abuses, discriminatory treatment of women, suppression of democratic participation and expression and use of arbitrary imprisonment, torture and execution,” Garland said.

Mehdiyev was arrested last year in New York for having a rifle outside the Brooklyn home of Alinejad, a longtime critic of Iran’s regime and its head-covering laws who has promoted videos of women violating those laws on social media.

Amirov was arrested on Thursday and will have a pretrial hearing in federal court in Manhattan later on Friday. Omarov was arrested in the Czech Republic earlier this month.