This trial now has its personal pizza connection.
Bungling hitman Khalid Mehdiyev admitted in court docket as we speak that as an alternative of a cool, collected, globe-trotting murderer, he was really only a man who labored at a pizza joint — and which may clarify the raft of errors he made when he tried to clip an exiled Iranian-American journalist in Brooklyn three years in the past.
“As you’re coordinating a global kidnapping, you’re additionally working at a pizza store?” Elena Quick, protection legal professional for one in all Mehdiyev’s alleged bosses, requested him as he sat on the stand in Manhattan federal court docket.
“That’s appropriate,” he answered.
“Large duty, doing each on the identical time!” Quick stated of the wannabe-killer’s day job at Peppino’s.
“That’s proper, miss,” the self-professed Russian mobster dryly replied.
However Mehdiyev, 27, didn’t provide a lot else throughout a prolonged cross-examination on the third day of the proceedings in opposition to Rafat Amirov and Polad Omarov, Azerbaijan nationals who allegedly employed Mehdiyev to kill journalist and Iranian regime critic Masih Alinejad again in 2022.
Brokers of the Iranian authorities have been looking Alinejad relentlessly since she fled the Center Jap nation in 2009, however their barbarous schemes have to date fallen brief.
Omarov and Amirov at the moment are on trial for murder-for-hire and tried homicide in support of racketeering for the plot — and authorities have stated they and Mehdiyev have been a part of the identical gang of their shared house nation.
However Mehdiyev was conspicuously reluctant to speak Thursday — even when Quick requested him if he labored for the ride-share firm Uber in 2020.
Mehdiyev answered that he didn’t keep in mind — to which Quick replied, “Amnesia as we sit right here as we speak?”
“No, miss,” Mehdiyev replied.
“You don’t keep in mind this a part of your life?” she requested.
“Simply a very long time I’ve been in jail, some issues I don’t keep in mind,” he answered.
“You don’t keep in mind driving 922 miles for Uber in 2020? Is that your testimony as we speak?”
“Sure, miss,” the convicted felon replied.
His close-mouthed testimony stood in stark distinction to Wednesday’s listening to, when he informed the court docket he tried to ingratiate himself into Alinejad’s world by texting her about varied matters — together with one the place he stated, “U the most effective journalist.”
“I used to be making an attempt to get into her life,” Mehdiyev, a bearded bear of a person initially from the Caspian Sea nation of Azerbaijan, stated coldly.
“I used to be making an attempt to get the simple option to kill her.”
However he failed time and time once more.
Ultimately, he tried to stake out her Flatbush house — however botched the task on July 28, 2022, when he tipped his hand by making an attempt to open her door, ordering meals to his automobile as he lurked outdoors after which working a cease signal because the cops trailed him.
Police arrested him in his Subaru Forester SUV with Illinois plates simply outdoors Alinejad’s home after the collection of staggering slipups.
Once they searched the automobile, they discovered a loaded AK-47 with one within the chamber and a ski masks — which Mehdiyev plainly stated in court docket he deliberate to make use of to assassinate Alinejad.
“I used to be there to attempt to kill the journalist,” stated Mehdiyev, of Yonkers.
Prosecutors have stated Iran’s authorities supplied to pay Amirov, 45, and Omarov, 40, about $500,000 for the hit on a girl recognized for her fixed and unflinching criticism of the Iranian regime.
The prison pair pleaded not responsible to the fees, which may imprison them for many years in the event that they’re convicted.
Mehdiyev — who stated he was paid $30,000 for the botched hit — determined to cooperate with the feds after pleading responsible to tried homicide and gun expenses.
He faces at the very least 15 years in jail for making an attempt to kill Alinejad and unrelated racketeering expenses.
Early Wednesday morning, Alinejad posted on X about how grateful she was that regulation enforcement protected her from her would-be killer.
“I recorded this video simply months after a person was arrested outdoors my Brooklyn house with a loaded gun,” she wrote, referencing a video she posted of her standing outdoors with a bunch of NYPD cops.
“Right this moment, in a federal court docket, he admitted he was despatched by the Islamic Republic to kill me for the ‘crime’ of talking out,” she stated.
“Profoundly grateful to U.S. regulation enforcement for not solely defending my life but in addition standing up without cost speech,” she continued.
“Free speech ought to by no means be punishable by dying.”
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