Rafat Amirov (“Farkhiddin Mirzoev”) and Polad Omarov (“Araz Aliyev”) were sentenced on Wednesday to 25 years each for plotting to kill Iranian-American journalist Masih Alinejad on behalf of the Iranian regime, the U.S. Department of Justice said.
The department said both Russian mobsters were found guilty in March of murder-for-hire and attempted murder in aid of racketeering.
“The defendants and their criminal associates came chillingly close to gunning down an Iranian-American journalist on the streets of New York,” stated John Eisenberg, assistant U.S. attorney general for national security.
“Tehran has long sought to silence Ms. Alinejad, and after multiple failed kidnapping attempts, turned to Omarov and Amirov and their organization to stalk and murder her,” Eisenberg said. “This 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.”
Jay Clayton, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, stated that the Iranian government, “a sponsor of terrorism, assassination and espionage around the globe, brazenly brought its efforts to murder Masih Alinejad to New York.”
“The plot exposed at trial involved actors on three continents, culminating with a hitman with an AK-47 outside Ms. Alinejad’s apartment in Brooklyn,” Clayton said. “The DOJ and our partners will expose and severely punish those who target U.S. citizens and bring terror to our community.”
The Justice Department said that Amirov and Omarov are “high-ranking members of an Azerbaijani faction of the Russian Mob,” who tried to kill Alinejad “on instructions from high-ranking members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.” The Iranian regime offered the two $500,000 for the murder.
