A murder-for-hire in Brooklyn: How the Iranian regime targeted a dissident with help from the Russian mob
Masih Alinejad
, a journalist and prominent critic of the Iranian regime, was in the garden of her Brooklyn home when she locked eyes with the hitman hired to assassinate her. It was late July, and she had gone into her garden to pick vegetables.
"He was gigantic," she later testified in federal district court in Manhattan at the trial of the men who plotted to kill her. "He was in the sunflowers staring into my eyes."
Though she eyed him with some suspicion, she also thought he might be taking pictures of her garden of "beautiful sunflowers."
"Every curse that I hear, I plant a flower," she explained, referring to threats she's endured for criticizing the Islamic Republic. "That's why I have a massive garden. A lot of cursing and threats."
The man in her garden, Khalid Mehdiyev, had been directed to kill Alinejad by fellow members of a Russian mob organization known as Thieves-in-Law, Rafat Amirov and Polad Omarov, prosecutors said
.
In his car was an AK-47 style assault rifle and 66 rounds of ammunition. Prosecutors said that Iran's government had offered Amirov and Omarov a $500,000 bounty.
On July 28, 2022, this murder-for-hire scheme involving Russian mobsters and the Iranian regime targeting a defiant dissident was foiled in Brooklyn. Alinejad, who has wild curls and often wears a white flower in her hair, is also an activist and leader of the movement to
free Iran's women from the compulsory hijab
.
This was only one of the
Iranian regime's several attempts to assassinate or kidnap
Alinejad. One alleged assassination planner targeted not just Alinejad, but also President Trump during his 2024 campaign last fall. Farhad Shakeri is accused of being an "asset" of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) who was tasked with devising a plan to kill Mr. Trump and recruiting two men to "silence and kill, on U.S. soil, an American journalist," according to the indictment.
While it was not the first attempt on her life, Amirov and Omarov were the first attempted assassins to go to trial in New York last week in a criminal case that provided a rare look into Iran's assassination attempts on U.S. soil. Prosecutors said high-ranking members of the IRGC were instructing Amirov and Omarov in the scheme. FBI agents detailed their analysis of devices and internet search histories tying Iranian intelligence officers to the plot. Through photographs, videos and messages, they illustrated the global network behind the attempted murder, with Medhiyev reporting his surveillance progress to Omarov and Amirov as he updated them from Brooklyn.
"We blocked it from both sides, it will be a show once she steps out of the house," messaged Medhiyev to Omarov, who then forwarded it to Amirov. "God willing," he replied. In another plan, Medhiyev went to ask Alinejad for flowers from her garden, but she did not come to the door. Her Ring camera surveillance at one point showed him pacing back and forth on her porch before trying to open the door. Medhiyev was later stopped by police, who found the rifle and bullets in the backseat of his car.
Last week, a federal jury found
Omarov and Amirov guilty on all charges
, including murder-for-hire and attempted murder in aid of racketeering. They face over 50 years in prison.
"I am being bombarded with emotion," Alinejad told CBS News over the phone shortly after the verdict, sounding tearful. "I just need to cry now, I need to laugh, I need to dance. I just got the news now."
"The real masterminds of this crime are still in power in Iran," she said. "I am waiting for the day when Ali Khamenei and his terrorist Revolutionary Guards face justice, I want them to be punished."
Despite the attempts on her life, Alinejad said she will not be silenced in her fight against the Islamic Republic.
"She has a mission," her husband Kambiz Foroohar told CBS News. "And that mission is that the Islamic Republic is like ISIS. It's an evil regime. She feels like she's compelled to challenge it. Compulsory hijab is just one way of challenging the Islamic Republic."
In Iran, Alinejad struggled to keep her wild curls hidden under a hijab.
"I have a lot of hair. It was not easy," she testified in court.
She was a political journalist there for over a decade but admitted she was always crossing the "red lines" of what Iran's government would allow people to write about. In 2009, she fled Iran.
"I'm a journalist, so I couldn't just keep quiet," she said. "I had no option but to leave Iran."
Once in the United States, she took off her hijab. She posted a photo of herself jumping in the air on social media, reveling in the feeling of the wind in her hair. In Iran, she "felt like a hostage."
That was the beginning of her campaign against the compulsory hijab, which evolved into the White Wednesday movement. Every Wednesday, women in Iran would film videos of themselves walking unveiled, a peaceful protest against compulsion.
"Social media is like my weapon," Alinejad testified. "My social media exposé."
The Iranian regime reacted by calling her and unveiled women "prostitutes," she said. They arrested hundreds of women.
Iran's Revolutionary Court has threatened women with up to 10 years in prison for sharing protest videos with her. "It's become a crime," she said, her voice cracking.
The government has also accused Alinejad of being a foreign agent. "Oh, all of them," she testified listing intelligence agencies: "Agent of the CIA, agent of Mossad, Agent of MI6, agent of President Trump."
In court, Alinejad broke down when the prosecution displayed a cartoon published in Iran's state-controlled newspaper depicting two dissidents hanging in the air and an image of Alinejad looking up at them fearfully. Both men, who held citizenship in Europe (one also had a U.S. green card) were kidnapped and executed by the Iranian regime. She testified in court that the caption read: "
Next: Masih Alinejad.
"
"Did you understand that to be about you?" the prosecutor asked.
"Yes," she replied tearfully.
By proxy, Alinejad's family in Iran has also become a target. In 2018, Iranian government officials tried to coerce relatives to lure her to Turkey, where they planned to capture her, offering a payment in exchange. The relatives did not accept.
In 2019, her brother was arrested on charges of associating with her. He was sentenced to eight years in prison but released after two years
.
"They can't reach her. They can reach her family." said Foroohar. "So that's always a big concern. But the family is also brave. They're enduring it."
In July 2021, four Iranian intelligence officials were charged with a kidnapping conspiracy – for developing plans to kidnap Alinejad and bring her back to Iran. They allegedly explored slipping her out of the U.S. by travel routes from Alinejad's home to the waterfront in Brooklyn, a maritime evacuation route involving speed boats, and maritime travel from New York to Venezuela, according to the indictment. The conspirators live in Iran, where they remain at large.
It is "chilling" how close Mehdiyev came to carrying out the plan to kill his wife, said Faroohar.
Medhiyev testified at trial about seeing Alinejad on the porch as he walked by her home, but his gun was in the car. By the time he went back for it, she had left.
"I was there to try to kill the journalist," he admitted.
Medhiyev was a key witness for the prosecution, but the defense tried to undermine his credibility, dubbing him the "pizza delivery hitman" after Medhiyev admitted on the stand that he had once planned a kidnapping while working at a pizza shop.
"As you're coordinating an international kidnapping you're also working at a pizza shop?" asked Omarov's defense attorney, Elena Fast. "That's correct," he replied.
On the day of his arrest, Mehdiyev had approached the door of Alinejad's home. At the time she was on a Zoom call with Venezuelan dissident Leopoldo Lopez and Russian chess player Garry Kasparov
.
She heard someone on the porch but did not go downstairs.
"She said, 'I don't know who that is but this call is more important,'" Lopez recounted over Whatsapp.
"It was the Zoom call that saved her life," he said.
Earlier, Medhiyev had sent Omarov a video of him opening a suitcase in the back of his car with an AK-47 style rifle inside. A caption read, "we are ready." Amirov replied, "keep the car clean."
Police arrested Mehdiyev nearby that day after he ran a stop sign. In the back of his car, they discovered the AK-47 style assault rifle and 66 rounds of ammunition.
Foroohar received a call at work from the FBI asking to "whisk me away to a safe location." He and Alinejad were later told that a man with an AK-47 had been arrested outside their home.
"It's quite stressful. It's quite scary," admitted Foroohar, when asked what it felt like to live under threat. "At the same time if you think about it too much, you are just paralyzed. So you compartmentalize."
"It's not easy. Sometimes you look over your shoulder," he added. "Sometimes you just learn how to trust."
Alinejad and her husband have lived in so many safe houses that they lost track. She has only been back to their Brooklyn home once to make sure the neighbors are watering her garden.
In 2024, it was under surveillance again.
On Nov. 7, Shakeri – the man assigned to assassinate both Mr. Trump and Alinejad – along with Carlisle Rivera and Jonathan Loadholt were indicted for their alleged involvement in a second murder-for-hire plot on Alinejad's life. Rivera and Loadholt are accused of surveilling her Brooklyn home for months, with the intent to locate and kill her. The Justice Department charged Shakeri with directing "a network of criminal associates to further Iran's assassination plots against its targets."
"It was very shocking and surprising," said Foroohar. "We thought the whole thing was over and done with. And we don't know when the next one is. We had a conversation with members of the Biden administration, and they said, you better get used to this because Iran is very determined to get rid of Masih, and they're not going to give up."
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