Exiled Iranian journalist testifies against two men accused of trying to kill her

MANHATTAN (CN) — Two summers ago, journalist and activist Masih Alinejad encountered a “gigantic” man in the driveway of her Brooklyn home.

They had an awkward interaction. Alinejad said that the man was talking; she shouted, “What?” But the man kept speaking, and Alinejad realized that he was talking to someone on his cell phone, not her. She apologized and went back inside her house.

She returned to her porch a few moments later to retrieve her key, which she had accidentally left sticking out of the lock on her door. When she did, the man had moved from her driveway to her flower bushes.

“He was in the sunflowers staring into my eyes,” Alinejad said Tuesday while testifying in Manhattan federal court. “Maybe he was just taking photos. A lot of people take pictures of my garden, my beautiful sunflowers.”

Still, Alinejad said that “the guy was a little bit suspicious.”

As it turns out, she was right to be wary. The man she saw was Khalid Mehdiyev, an Azerbaijani member of the Russian crime group “Thieves in Law,” who said he was hired by fellow mobsters to murder Alinejad on behalf of the Iranian government.

Prosecutors said that Iran “desperately” wanted Alinejad dead — and paid the mobsters $500,000 to kill her — because of her outspoken criticism of the country’s mandatory hijab law.

Lucky for Alinejad, the supposed plot failed. Mehdiyev testified last week that he blew a stop sign and got arrested before he could take his shot.

On Tuesday, Alinejad faced the two men accused of hiring the gunman and spearheading the botched murder for hire: Rafat Amirov and Polad Omarov, who each face charges for their role in the purported scheme.

A key witness for the government, Alinejad testified Tuesday about her journalism and activism in Iran. She said she found herself reporting on the Iranian parliament, where she was eventually kicked out after publishing its members’ pay slips.

“There are a lot of red lines,” Alinejad said about reporting in Iran. “You cannot write about the nuclear deal. You cannot write about hijabs … we don’t have free media in Iran.”

“Did you ever get in trouble for crossing those red lines?” asked prosecutor Michael Lockard.

“Always,” Alinejad shot back with a smirk.

Now living in exile in New York City, Alinejad said she continues to draw the ire of the Iranian government with her ongoing social media campaign that encourages women to defy Iran’s morality police and ditch their head coverings.

“Social media is my weapon,” Alinejad, wearing her signature white flower in her voluminous, curly hair, said on the witness stand.

Women caught by Iran’s morality police without hijabs in public could receive harsh punishments, Alinejad said, like whipping or prison sentences. Still, her movement has ballooned in popularity, forcing the Iranian government to respond.

“First they downplayed me by calling me a prostitute,” Alinejad said.

Later, she said the Iranian government claimed she was a foreign agent.

“I’ve been an accused agent of the CIA, agent of Mossad, agent of MI6,” she said. “They call me an agent of President Trump.”

Prosecutors say that Alinejad’s work has made her a target of the Iranian government for over a decade. They said that Iran turned to the murder-for-hire plot after it had failed to lure Alinejad to Turkey to kidnap her there a year earlier.

Mehdiyev testified that Amirov and Omarov chose him to be the triggerman since he was based in Yonkers, New York, roughly a two-hour drive from Alinejad’s house in Brooklyn. He was initially charged in the indictment alongside Amirov and Omarov, but he pleaded guilty to charges in two federal districts and agreed to testify for the government.

Mehdiyev told jurors that he stalked Alinejad for about a week from his car until NYPD officers pulled him over and found an AK-47, 66 rounds of ammo and a ski mask. Prosecutors asked him what his goal was prior to being pulled over.

“Shoot the journalist, kill the journalist,” Mehdiyev said.

He added that it was Omarov who was supposed to pay him his cut of the cash, which he knew “was coming from Rafat [Amirov] from Iran government.”

Amirov and Omarov each face charges including murder for hire and attempted murder in aid of racketeering. A third man, Ruhollah Bazghandi — a senior member in Iran’s Revolutionary guard accused of hiring Amirov and Omarov in the first place — is charged, too. But he remains at large.

Alinejad didn’t comment on her testimony when leaving the courthouse on Tuesday. The trial’s judge told jurors that they could start deliberating as early as this week.

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