The Justice Department revealed Iran’s assassination-for-hire plot to kill Donald Trump. Image file | Photo credit: BRIAN SNYDER
The Justice Department on Friday revealed an Iranian assassination-for-hire plot to kill Donald Trump, charging a man who said he was assigned by government officials before this week’s election to plot the assassination of the Republican president-elect.
Investigators learned about the plan to kill Trump from Farhad Shakeri, an accused Iranian government asset who spent time in an American prison for robbery and who authorities say maintained a network of criminal associates registered by Tehran for surveillance and murder-for-hire plots.
Shakeri told investigators​​​​ that a contact in Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard instructed him last September to put aside other work he was doing and put together a seven-day plan to surveil and eventually kill Trump, according to an unsealed criminal complaint filed in federal court in Manhattan.
The official was quoted by Shakeri as saying that “We have spent a lot of money” and that “money is not a problem.” Shakeri told investigators​​​​the official told him that if he could not come up with a plan in seven days, the plot would be put on hold until after the election because the official thought Trump would lose and it would be easier to kill him. , the complaint said.
Shakeri are common and persist in Iran. Two other men were jailed on charges that Shakeri recruited them to follow and kill prominent Iranian-American journalist Masih Alinejad, who had been involved in an Iranian assassination-for-hire plot foiled by law enforcement.
“I was very surprised,” Alinejad said, speaking by phone to The Associated Press from Berlin, where she was attending a ceremony to mark the wall’s anniversary. “This is the third attempt against me and it’s horrible.”
In a post on the X social media platform, he said: “I came to America to exercise my First Amendment right to freedom of speech – I don’t want to die. I want to fight tyranny, and I deserve to be safe. Thank law enforcement for protecting me, but I am asking the US government to protect America’s national security.
Attorneys for the other two defendants, identified as Jonathan Loadholt and Carlisle Rivera, did not immediately return messages seeking comment. Iran’s UN mission declined to comment.
Shakeri, an Afghan national who immigrated to the US as a child but was later deported after serving 14 years in prison for robbery, also told investigators that he was assigned by Revolutionary Guard contacts to plan the murder of two Jewish-Americans living in New. York and Israeli tourists in Sri Lanka. Officials say he overlapped with Rivera while in prison as well as an unidentified co-conspirator.
The criminal complaint said Shakeri revealed some details of the alleged plot in several taped phone interviews with FBI agents while in Iran. The reason for the cooperation, he told investigators, was to try to reduce the prison sentence of a friend who was in the US bar.
According to the complaint, although officials determined that some of the information he provided was false, his statements about plans to assassinate Trump and Iran’s willingness to pay large sums of money were determined to be accurate.
The plot, which was announced just days after Trump’s defeat of Democrat Kamala Harris, reflects what federal officials have described as efforts by Iran to target US government officials, including Trump, on US soil. Last summer, the Justice Department charged a Pakistani man with ties to Iran in an assassination-for-hire plot targeting American officials.
“There are few actors in the world that pose as serious a threat to the national security of the United States as Iran,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement Friday. FBI Director Christopher Wray said the case showed Iran’s “sustained efforts to target US citizens,” including Trump, “government leaders and other dissidents critical of the regime in Tehran.”
The Iran operation also conducted a hack-and-leak operation of emails linked to Trump campaign partners in what officials assessed as an attempt to disrupt the presidential election.
Intelligence officials say Iran opposes Trump’s re-election, because he is more likely to increase tensions between Washington and Tehran. The Trump administration ended the nuclear deal with Iran, reimposed sanctions and ordered the killing of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, an action that prompted Iranian leaders to vow revenge.
Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said the president-elect knew about the assassination plot and that nothing would stop him from “returning to the White House and restoring peace to the world.”
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Neumeister reported from New York.
Published – 09 November 2024 04:53 IST
