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Two jap European gangsters had been convicted Thursday of ordering a bumbling hitman to kill exiled Iranian-American dissident Masih Alinejad in Brooklyn — on the behest of the barbarous Iranian regime.
Rafat Amirov, 45, and Polad Omarov, 40, took $500,000 of “blood cash” from the Iranian authorities earlier than hiring Khalid Mehdiyev, a 27-year-old self-professed member of the Russian mob, to clip the activist at her Brooklyn dwelling, prosecutors say.
However authorities foiled the brazen plot on July 28, 2022, after they arrested Mehdiyev — carrying a loaded machine gun and a ski masks — simply exterior Alinejad’s Flatbush dwelling.
“I used to be there to attempt to kill the journalist,” Mehdiyev cooly testified throughout a week-and-a-half-long trial in Manhattan federal courtroom.
The bearded bear of a person botched the high-stakes hit in spectacular style, together with by ordering meals to his Subaru Forester SUV with Illinois plates parked exterior her dwelling, jurors heard. He additionally wandered round her porch with out his masks, and ran a cease signal whereas fleeing the scene, resulting in his arrest.
Alinejad is thought for her outspoken criticism of the Iranian authorities and for encouraging girls to defy the nation’s draconian legislation forcing them to put on obligatory headscarves, or hijabs, or threat imprisonment.
“For these so-called crimes, the Iranian regime has spent years trying to harass, smear, intimidate and even kidnap Ms. Alinejad,” prosecutor Michael Lockard stated in his closing assertion. “And when these efforts failed, the federal government of Iran put a $500,000 bounty on her head.”
Alinejad, 48, has survived a number of different assassination and kidnapping makes an attempt since fleeing Iran in 2009, US officers say.
The human rights activist took the stand Tuesday and described the chilling second she noticed the amateurish murderer staring straight into her eyes by the sunflower patch on her entrance porch. However she informed jurors she figured the “gigantic” hitman was simply admiring her backyard.
Mehdiyev, who lived in Yonkers earlier than his arrest, was doubling as a Bronx pizza store employee and a mob henchman for an Azerbaijan-based crew referred to as the Thieves-in-Regulation on the time of the botched hit, jurors heard.
Amirov and Omarov supplied him $30,000 to clip Alinejad, he testified. The discount-bin hitman then up to date Omarov on WhatsApp in actual time in regards to the plot, and Omarov informed Amirov, who in flip was in contact with Iranian officers, prosecutors stated.
The 2 gangsters every face a possible sentence of a long time in jail on their convictions for murder-for-hire, conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire and conspiracy to commit cash laundering.
Their attorneys had argued that jurors shouldn’t belief the phrase of Mehdiyev, who matter-of-factly described directing murders, kidnappings and extortion plots throughout a lifetime of crime that started a couple of decade in the past in his Caspian Sea homeland.
The would-be killer determined to cooperate with the feds after pleading responsible to tried homicide and gun expenses.
“The federal government made a cope with a manipulative, violent, mendacity individual,” Amirov’s lawyer Michael Martin stated in his closing assertion.
Omarov’s lawyer claimed that the gangsters by no means meant to kill Alinejad however had as a substitute concocted a weird scheme to “rip-off” the Iranians by hiring a “clown” would-be murderer that they knew couldn’t pull off the killing.
“This was a rip-off,” Quick informed jurors. “There was no James Bond 007. They employed a clown because the hit man.”
Jurors requested to learn again a replica of Mehdiyev’s testimony throughout their deliberations.
He faces least 15 years in jail for attempting to kill Alinejad and unrelated racketeering expenses.
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