Two gangsters were convicted Thursday of ordering a bumbling hitman to kill exiled Iranian-American dissident Masih Alinejad in Brooklyn — to claim a bounty from the barbarous Iranian regime.
Rafat Amirov, 45, and Polad Omarov, 40, took $500,000 of “blood money” from the Iranian government before hiring Khalid Mehdiyev, a 27-year-old self-professed member of the Russian mob, to clip the activist at her Brooklyn home, prosecutors said.
A Manhattan federal jury took under four hours to convict Amirov and Omarov of all of the charges they’d faced, including murder-for-hire, conspiracy, and money laundering.
Authorities foiled the bair’s brazen plot on July 28, 2022, when they arrested Mehdiyev just outside Alinejad’s Flatbush home as he carried a loaded machine gun and a ski mask.
Alinejad testified about watching the “gigantic” hitman lurking among the sunflowers on her Brooklyn porch. REUTERS“I was there to try to kill the journalist,” Mehdiyev cooly testified during a week-and-a-half-long trial.
Alinejad released a defiant statement after the verdict ripping Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei as “despicable” and calling the jury’s decision “a powerful gift from America to the Iranian people, a sign that justice is being served,” according to a translation from Farsi.
“You lost, Ali Khamenei,” the statement added. “Yes, your corrupt and murderous army acted. But this time, they were humiliated. This time, your mercenaries were caught by the FBI. And now those you hired to kill me will spend years behind bars.”
The bearded bear of a man botched the high-stakes hit in spectacular fashion, including by ordering food to his Subaru Forester SUV with Illinois plates parked outside her home, jurors heard. He also wandered around her porch without his mask, and ran a stop sign while fleeing the scene, leading to his arrest.
Alinejad is known for her outspoken criticism of the Iranian government and for encouraging women to defy the country’s draconian law forcing them to wear headscarves, or hijabs, or risk imprisonment.
“For these so-called crimes, the Iranian regime has spent years attempting to harass, smear, intimidate and even kidnap Ms. Alinejad,” prosecutor Michael Lockard said in his closing statement. “And when those efforts failed, the government of Iran put a $500,000 bounty on her head.”
Alinejad, 48, has survived several other assassination and kidnapping attempts since fleeing Iran in 2009, US officials said.
The human rights activist confronted the two men the feds say ordered her killing in court. Gabriella BassThe human rights activist took the stand Tuesday and described the chilling moment she saw the amateurish assassin staring straight into her eyes through the sunflower patch on her front porch. But she told jurors she figured the “gigantic” hitman was just admiring her garden.
Mehdiyev, who lived in Yonkers before his arrest, was doubling as a Bronx pizza shop worker and a mob henchman for an Azerbaijan-based crew known as the Thieves-in-Law at the time of the botched hit, jurors heard.
Amirov faces decades in prison when he’s sentenced on the murder-for-hire conviction. SDNYAmirov and Omarov offered him $30,000 to clip Alinejad, he testified. The bargain-bin hitman then updated Omarov on WhatsApp in real time about the plot, according to prosecutors. Omarov told Amirov, who in turn was in touch with Iranian officials, prosecutors said.
The two purported crew leaders of a gang called Thieves-in-Law each face a likely sentence of decades in prison on their various charges when they are sentenced on Sept, 17.
Their lawyers had argued that jurors should not trust the word of Mehdiyev, who matter-of-factly described directing murders, kidnappings and extortion plots during a life of crime that began about a decade ago in his Caspian Sea homeland.
The would-be killer decided to cooperate with the feds after pleading guilty to attempted murder and gun charges.
Omarov and Amirov were members of an eastern European gang called the Thieves in Law, prosecutors say. SDNY“The government made a deal with a manipulative, violent, lying person,” Amirov’s lawyer Michael Martin said in his closing statement.
Omarov’s lawyer claimed that the gangsters never meant to kill Alinejad but had instead concocted a bizarre scheme to “scam” the Iranians by hiring a “clown” would-be assassin that they knew could not pull off the killing.
“This was a scam,” Fast told jurors. “There was no James Bond 007. They hired a clown as the hit man.”
Jurors asked to read back a copy of Mehdiyev’s testimony during their brief deliberations.
The failed professional killer faces at least 15 years in prison for trying to kill Alinejad and unrelated racketeering charges.
