Mobsters get 25-year sentences in Iran-backed murder-for-hire plot of Masih Alinejad

MANHATTAN (CN) — A Manhattan judge on Wednesday sentenced two members of the Russian mob to 25 years in prison in their botched plot to kill Iranian dissident journalist Masih Alinejad.

Rafat Amirov and Polad Omarov were convicted earlier this year on charges including murder for hire and conspiracy after a federal jury in Manhattan heard evidence tying them to an Iran-backed plot to kill Alinejad at her Brooklyn home in 2022. Prosecutors said the Iranian government offered the duo $500,000 in “blood money” to make it happen.

But the plot was foiled when their would-be triggerman, Khalid Mehdiyev, flipped and cooperated with prosecutors after he was arrested outside of the target’s home.

U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon, a Bill Clinton appointee in the Southern District of New York, called the case “difficult” and “uncomfortable” on Wednesday. She scolded Amirov and Omarov for their attempt to “take a human life for no reason at all.”

“This was a terrible, terrible crime that has had terrible, terrible repercussions on some very fine people, and will continue to, probably for the rest of their lives,” McMahon said before handing down the sentences.

Minutes prior, Alinejad addressed the court just feet away from her would-be killers. She urged the judge to “send a signal” to the Iranian government.

“Because of these criminals, I have to watch over my shoulder,” she said.

Outside of the courthouse, she celebrated that Amirov and Omarov were headed to prison, telling reporters that “justice is beautiful.”

“This is a historical day,” she said. “I grew up in a small village in Iran where I was brainwashed, alongside millions of schoolgirls and schoolboys chanting, ‘death to America.’ How ironic, that same country America gave me a second life.”

During a weeklong trial earlier this year, Mehdiyev, an Azerbaijani mobster who worked at a Bronx pizza shop at the time, recalled the simple instructions he was given by Amirov and Omarov before his arrest:

“Shoot the journalist, kill the journalist,” he said on the witness stand.

Jurors saw clips from Alinejad’s home security camera of Mehdiyev milling about her yard and even walking up to her porch, taking photos and videos of the house to prove to Amirov and Omarov — who he said contracted him for the killing — that he could accomplish the hit.

Alinejad said she encountered the “gigantic” would-be hitman lingering around her sunflower garden just days before he was arrested.

“He was in the sunflowers staring into my eyes,” Alinejad testified.

But Mehdiyev attracted suspicion by repeatedly ordering food to his car, parked just outside of Alinejad’s home for several days. On July 29, 2022, NYPD officers pulled Mehdiyev over after he blew a stop sign, arrested him for driving with an expired license, then found a loaded AK-47, 66 rounds of ammunition and a ski mask in his car, uncovering the plot.

After his arrest, Mehdiyev said he flipped on Amirov and Omarov after learning his promised cut of cash was a smaller slice of the $500,000 than he had anticipated.

Omarov sought no more than a 10-year sentence for his role in the scheme. Amirov, who was a higher-ranked mobster as a “vor,” sought 13 years maximum.

“I have always strived to treat people with fairness,” Amirov told the judge, through a translator, prior to his sentencing. “Based on my experiences with you … you are a very fair person.”

McMahon later invoked the same theme of fairness when sentencing Amirov to more than two decades behind bars.

“It is not fair that Ms. Alinejad and her husband and his children have had their lives upended,” she said. “It is not fair that Ms. Alinejad should live in constant fear.”

Omarov did not address the court on Wednesday.

Prosecutors had asked for 55-year sentences for each man, arguing they each played “indispensable roles” in Alinejad’s assassination plot.

McMahon on Wednesday said that would be “excessive,” given the crimes on which the men were convicted. Though she also lamented the 10-year maximum sentence for murder-for-hire counts that don’t injure or kill a victim, noting that “these crimes are more serious” than such a punishment would suggest.

The judge gave Amirov and Omarov the 10-year maximum for that count. The other convictions, including money laundering and conspiracy, made up the 25-year total for each man.

Alinejad is an outspoken critic of the Iranian regime. A journalist-turned-activist, she drew the ire of the nation’s government by speaking out against its morality police and encouraging women not to comply with Iran’s mandatory hijab laws.

That “enraged the regime,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Jacob Gutwillig said during the trial’s opening statements, prompting it to put a bounty on her head that Amirov and Omarov tried to capitalize on.

Ruhollah Bazghandi, a senior member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, is charged in the scheme as being the man to hire the duo in the first place. He remains at large.

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