Three men working for the Iranian government have been arrested and charged with plotting to kill dissident Iranian journalist Masih Alinejad in the United States, the US Justice Department announced on Friday.
The three defendants were members of an Eastern European criminal organisation with ties to Iran and were paid to assassinate Alinejad by Iranian individuals connected to the Islamic Republic, according to the indictment.
As an exiled journalist and women’s rights activist living in New York, Alinejad was targeted because she is openly opposed to the Iranian government.
“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,” said Attorney General Merrick B. Garland. “This activity posed such a threat to the government of Iran that the chief judge of Iran’s revolutionary courts warned that anyone who sent videos to the victim criticizing the regime would be sentenced to prison.”
Alinejad had also been the target of a previous kidnapping plot in 2021. Four people indicted in that case had ties to Iranian intelligence.
“This is the face of a person who was a target of an assassination plot,” Alinejad said on the video she shared soon after the charges were announced. “Let me make it clear, I am not scared for my life because I knew that killing, assassinating, hanging, torturing, and raping are in the DNA of the Islamic Republic.”
The activist also called on the United States government to take strong action against Iran, saying, “You can not negotiate with a terrorist regime.”
Alinejad became a hostile target for the Iranian government after she created the #WhiteWednesdays social media campaign in 2017, inviting Iranian women to post videos and photos of protests online, according to a previous report by NBC News.
