American judicial authorities announced Friday the indictment of an “agent of Iran” accused of having received orders from Tehran to organize assassination plans in the United States, targeting in particular Donald Trump and a dissident Iranian-American.
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Farhad Shakeri, a 51-year-old Afghan residing in Iran after serving 14 years in prison in the United States for robbery, is accused of recruiting common criminals for the Revolutionary Guards, the ideological army of the Islamic Republic, according to court documents.
“Few actors in the world pose as serious a threat to the national security of the United States as Iran,” Justice Minister Merrick Garland said in a statement from his office.
“This agent of the Iranian regime was tasked by the regime with leading a network of criminal accomplices to carry out Iran’s assassination plans against its targets, including President-elect Donald Trump,” he said. added.
These conclusions are based on telephone conversations between agents of the American federal police (FBI) and Farhad Shakeri, who thus wished to obtain a reduction of sentence for a person incarcerated in the United States, according to the prosecution.
During these interviews, which took place between September 30 and Thursday (November 7), he notably claimed to have received instructions in September from a senior Revolutionary Guard official to “focus on surveillance and ultimately the assassination of former President Donald Trump,” according to these documents.
This official asked him on October 7 to present to him within seven days an assassination plan, explaining to him that beyond this deadline the project would be postponed until after the November 5 election, considering that Donald Trump would lose it and that it would therefore be easier to target him afterwards, according to the same sources.
Kidnapping and assassination plans
The Islamic Republic has for years harbored a desire to retaliate for the death of Revolutionary Guard General Qassem Soleimani, killed on January 3, 2020 in Iraq in a drone strike ordered by Donald Trump during his first term, recalls the Ministry of Defense. Justice.
Two Americans were also arrested Thursday in the case: Carlisle Rivera, 49, and Jonathon Loadholt, 36, both residents of New York City and charged with planning the assassination of an American journalist of Iranian origin. very critical of the Islamic Republic.
The latter, identified as “victim number 1”, is not named by name, but described as having already been the target of assassination or kidnapping attempts sponsored by Tehran, which corresponds to the Iranian-American journalist and dissident Masih Alinejad.
Court documents report plans to monitor “victim number 1” during a conference scheduled for February 15, 2024 at Fairfield University in Connecticut (northeast).
In a video broadcast on social networks on Friday, Masih Alinejad confirms that it is her and that she was one of the speakers at this conference, which was ultimately canceled. She specifies that she was informed on February 15 by FBI agents of an “imminent threat” targeting her.
In October, American justice initiated proceedings against four Iranians, including a general of the Revolutionary Guards, for having sponsored a plan to assassinate Masih Alinejad in New York in 2022.
The target was not identified, but Masih Alinejad confirmed that it was her.
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