Activist and journalist Masih Alinejad was the secondary target in the Iranian plot to assassinate Donald Trump, court documents show.
The Justice Department on Friday unsealed criminal charges against three people involved in the foiled plot to assassinate Trump before the election.
Farjad Shakeri, 51, who remains at large in Iran, was believed to be the lead man for both murders until the operation was interrupted
Carlisle Rivera, 49, and Jonathon Loadholt, 36, were arrested by the FBI in New York City and went on trial Thursday, charged with conspiracy.
Activist and journalist Masih Alinejad was secondary target in Iranian plot to assassinate Donald Trump, court documents reveal
Alinejad is a human rights activist living in Brooklyn who has long criticized the extreme oppression of women in Iran.
She has been the target of at least two other recent assassination plots, and is the target of a fatwa issued by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
Iranian intelligence planned to kidnap her in 2021 and take her back to Iran for a grim fate, and in July 2022 a man was arrested after guarding her house for two weeks with a loaded AK-47.
FBI documents described her as an Iranian-American journalist, author and political activist, and an outspoken critic of the Iranian regime’s human rights abuses and corruption.
Alinejad “has long been a high-priority target of the Iranian regime,” the report said.
The criminal complaint alleged that Shakeri was tasked by Iranian intelligence with organizing the hits, and that he offered Rivera and Loadholt $100,000 to pull them off.
There’s more to come.