U.S. prosecutors charges four Iranians with plot to kidnap New York journalist

 

WASHINGTON, D.C.: U.S. prosecutors charged four Iranian intelligence agents on Tuesday with conspiring to kidnap a New York journalist and human rights activist who was critical of Iran, according to a U.S. Justice Department indictment.

Though the target of the plot was not named, Reuters has confirmed she is Iranian-American journalist Masih Alinejad, who has worked with the U.S. government-funded Voice of America Persian language service and reports on human rights issues in Iran.

Alinejad, when reached by Reuters after the indictment was released, said she was shocked. She also said she had been working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation for the past eight months ago, in a bid to identify the plotters.

"They showed me the Islamic Republic had gotten very close," she said, as quoted by Reuters.

Prosecutors in Washington said the Iranians had hired private investigators under false pretenses to spy on the journalist in Brooklyn. The Iranians had the investigators videotape Alinejad's family and home as they made plans to kidnap her.

The four Iranian defendants planned "to forcibly take their intended victim to Iran, where the victim's fate would have been uncertain, at best," said Audrey Strauss, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.

In the past, Iranian intelligence officers have tricked anti-government Iranians to travel to destinations where they were kidnapped and returned to Iran, U.S. authorities said.

The Iranian operatives hired private investigators in Manhattan to spy on Alinejad and her family, telling investigators she was a missing person from Dubai who had fled the country to avoid paying a debt, according to prosecutors.

Prosecutors said the Iranians had looked into taking the journalist from New York on a high-speed boat headed for Venezuela.

Iran directed the operation against the journalist with "the intention to lure our citizen back to Iran, as retaliation for their freedom of expression," said Assistant Director Alan E. Kohler Jr. of the FBI's Counterintelligence Division.

In 2019, Iranian officers lured Ruhollah Zam, a journalist, from his home in France, later executing him in Iran on sedition charges, prosecutors said.

In the past, Alinejad has reported on women in Iran protesting laws requiring head coverings, as well as accounts of Iranians killed in demonstrations in 2019.

Alinejad said Iranian operatives had, in the past, attempted to lure her to travel to Turkey with promises to meet with family members, she said.

FBI agents warned Alinejad earlier in 2021 that she was a target for kidnapping by Iran. She and her husband were then relocated to different safe houses, as U.S. officials investigated the Iranians.

Meanwhile, she told reporters that she was shaken after reading the indictment.

"I can't believe I'm not even safe in America," she said.