Federal prosecutors charge Iranian Revolutionary Guards official in assassination plot on US soil

By Hannah Rabinowitz, CNN

(CNN) — Federal prosecutors in New York have charged a high-ranking official in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and three other people with connections to the Iranian government in an alleged plot to kill a New York-based journalist and human rights activist who is critical of the Iranian government.

The charges made public Tuesday against the official, Ruhollah Bazghandi, are the first to accuse an Iranian government official by name in the alleged plot to kill journalist Masih Alinejad.

In addition to the charges against Bazghandi and three others, three additional men who are allegedly part of an Eastern European criminal organization with ties to Iran were charged in the same murder-for-hire plot last year and are in custody. Prosecutors allege they were enlisted to carry out the assassination of Alinejad in the United States.

“We will not tolerate efforts by an authoritarian regime like Iran to undermine the fundamental rights guaranteed to every American,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement Tuesday. “Three of the defendants charged in this horrific plot are now in U.S. custody, and we will never stop working to identify, find, and bring to justice all those who endanger the safety of the American people.”

Alinejad posted on X Tuesday that “the revelation that the assassination plot against me in July 2022 was orchestrated by Ali Khamenei’s IRGC is a stark reminder of the brutal lengths to which the Islamic regime will go to silence dissidents, even those far beyond Iran’s borders.” She vowed to “continue advocating … for the rights of the Iranian people to secure democracy and free themselves from dictatorship, no matter the risks.”

”Despite moving 21 times between safe houses, I have a message for @khamenei_ir,” Alinejad wrote, tagging Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in the post.

“Know this – the day of reckoning is coming, and no matter how far you run, justice will find you. Your regime will face accountability for the suffering it has inflicted. You may have driven me from my home, but now it is your turn to face the consequences of your crimes. Go to hell,” Alinejad wrote.

FBI Director Christopher Wray said in a statement Tuesday that the newly unsealed charges expose “the full extent of Iran’s plot to silence an American journalist for criticizing the Iranian regime.”

“According to the charges, a brigadier general in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and a former Iranian intelligence officer, working with a network of conspirators, planned to kill a dissident living in New York City,” Wray said. “The FBI’s investigation led to the disruption of this plot as one of the conspirators was allegedly on their way to murder the victim in New York.”

Bazghandi is described in court documents as “an IRGC Brigadier General” who previously served as the chief of an IRGC counterintelligence department. Bazghandi was sanctioned by the Treasury Department in 2023 because of his “involvement in assassination plots against journalists, Israeli citizens, and others deemed enemies of Iran, as well as his participation in the detention of foreign prisoners held in Iran and involvement in IRGC-IO’s operations in Syria.”

According to prosecutors, Bazghandi has monitored other assassination plots of perceived enemies of Iran, including a 2019 incident in which an individual residing in France was lured back to Iran, imprisoned and executed. Bazghandi has also been photographed with Qasem Soleimani, a top general of the IRGC who was killed by a US drone strike in 2020, and Javad Ghaffari, and IRGC-Qods Force commander who led forces in Syria, court documents say.

Bazghandi allegedly discussed the plot to murder Alinejad with a second defendant, Haj Taher. Taher, in turn, communicated about the plot defendants Hossein Sedighi and Mohammad Forouzan, prosecutors say, including about payment for the murder. Taher, Sedighi and Forouzan also have connections to the Iranian government, prosecutors allege.

The plot was communicated then to defendant Rafat Amirov, the leader of an Eastern European criminal organization who was previously charged, court documents say. Amirov directed at least two other members of his organization, Polad Omarov and Zailat Mamedov, to coordinate and help carry out the plot.

The seven men are facing several charges, including murder for hire and racketeering. CNN has reached out to attorneys for Amirov and Omarov for comment, and the other defendants do not yet have lawyers listed on the court docket.

CNN’s Kara Scannell contributed to this report.

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2024 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.