Oct. 30 (UPI) — Accepting a $500,000 contract to kill Iranian-American journalist Masih Alinejad earned Russians Rafat Amirov and Polad Omarov each 25 years in prison on Thursday.
U.S. District Court of the Southern District of New York Judge Colleen McMahon sentenced Omarov and Amirov after they were found guilty in March, the Justice Department announced in a news release.
“The defendants and their criminal associates came chillingly close to gunning down an Iranian-American journalist on the streets of New York,” Assistant Attorney General for National Security John Eisenberg said.
“Tehran has long sought to silence Ms. Alinejad,” Eisenberg said, “and after multiple failed kidnapping attempts, turned to Omarov and Amirov and their organization to stalk and murder her.”
Federal prosecutors described the two Russians as “two highly ranked members of the Russian mob.”
The Iranian government hired the pair to kill Alinejad, who is also an author and a human rights activist.
The motive was to “silence her criticism of the Iranian government and public advocacy of human rights,” the Justice Department said.
She has published stories about the Iranian government’s human rights abuses, especially against women, repression of political expression and the killing of Iranians who engage in peaceful protests.
The Justice Department said the Iranian government tried to kidnap Alinejad in the United States in 2020 and 2021 and turned to the Russian mob after failing.
Alinejad, who lives in the United States, observed a hitman, armed with an AK-47, driving a vehicle outside her Brooklyn apartment on July 28, 2022. The man had been sent by Omarov and Amirov.
Eisenberg said the case is “part of a well-documented and disturbing rise in plots involving criminal networks paid by Iran to target dissidents in the United States and around the world.”
Alinejad has long been a target of the Iranian regime.
One scheme began in 2018 that involved Iran attempting to lure Alinejad to a third country through the use of her Iran-based family. Research into travel routes was also conducted by the suspects from Alinejad’s home to a Brooklyn waterfront. One suspect allegedly looked up military-style speed boats for maritime evacuation out of New York City as well as maritime travel routes from Manhattan to Venezuela, a country with friendly relations with Iran.
Alinejad told reporters outside the courtroom on Thursday that the justice that occurred inside is what the people of Iran are fighting for.
“This is a historical day,” she said. “I grew up in a small village in Iran where I was brainwashed alongside with millions of school girls, school boys to chant ‘death to America.’ How Ironic, the same country, America, gave me a second life. That’s the true face of justice.”
Among those who accompanied Alinejad was Barry Rosen, a survivor of the Iran hostage crisis of 1979.
“Masih is one of those important people in the world,” he said. “She stands for justice, in the United States and around the world.”
The Iranian regime wants to execute her, he added, stating she speaks “for all of us: liberty, women, life and freedom.”
