The US government has brought charges against an Afghan national in connection with Iran’s alleged plot to assassinate Donald Trump before he is elected the next president.
The Department of Justice on Friday announced an indictment against Farhad Shakeri, 51, accusing him of being tasked with “laying out the plan” to kill Trump.
The US government said Mr Shakeri had not been arrested and was believed to be in Iran – which described the claims as “completely baseless”.
In a criminal complaint filed in Manhattan court, prosecutors allege that an official in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard directed Mr. Shakeri in September to plan the surveillance and killing of Trump.
“The Department of Justice has charged an asset of the Iranian regime who was tasked by the regime with directing a criminal network to continue carrying out Iranian assassination plots against its targets, including including President-elect Donald Trump,” U.S. Attorney Merrick Garland said in a statement. declare.
The Justice Department also charged two other people believed to have been recruited to kill an American journalist who was an outspoken critic of Iran.
The other individuals identified by the justice department are Carlisle Rivera, also known as “Pop,” 49, from Brooklyn, and Jonathon Loadholt, 36, from Staten Island.
Both appeared in court in the Southern District of New York on Thursday and are being held pending trial.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said similar allegations of an attempt to assassinate the US president had been made before, but Iran denied it and continued to be false.
In a statement, Baghaei added that repeating such statements risks “further complicating matters between the US and Iran”.
Trump has faced two separate alleged assassination attempts this year. In July, a gunman grazed the former president’s ear after shooting at him during a protest in Pennsylvania.
Then, in September, a man was arrested for pointing a rifle at Trump, who was playing golf on his course in West Palm Beach.
The indictment alleges that Mr. Shakeri was asked to come up with a plan to kill Trump in seven days.
According to prosecutors, Mr. Shakeri told law enforcement that he had no intention of proposing a plan to kill Trump within that seven-day time frame, so Iranian Revolutionary Guard officials paused the plan. plan.
Mr. Shakeri said the Iranian government told him it would be easier to try to assassinate Trump after the election because they believed he would lose, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors described Mr. Shakeri as an Afghan citizen who came to the United States as a child. He was finally deported around 2008 after serving 14 years in prison for robbery.
Prosecutors said the 51-year-old used “a network of criminal associates” from prison, including Mr. Rivera and Mr. Loadholt, to conduct surveillance on Iranian government targets .
Prosecutors allege that Mr. Shakeri promised Mr. Rivera and Mr. Loadholt $100,000 to murder the American journalist, who reported on human rights abuses and corruption by the Iranian regime. Prosecutors said the journalist, who was not named, had been targeted in the past.
In a social media post Friday, Brooklyn-based journalist Masih Alinejad said the FBI had arrested two men for plotting to kill her. She said the killers allegedly arrived in front of her home in Brooklyn.
“I came to America to exercise my First Amendment right to freedom of speech – I don’t want to die,” Ms. Alinejad wrote. “I want to fight against tyranny and I deserve to be safe.”
In addition to the American journalist and Trump, the indictment also accused the Iranian government of trying to kill two Jewish-American businessmen living in New York City who supported Israel on social networks.
Mr. Shakeri also told prosecutors that his Iranian contacts asked him to plan a mass shooting targeting Israeli tourists in Sri Lanka in October 2024, a year later. Hamas’s attack on Israel.
Mr. Shakeri, Mr. Rivera and Mr. Loadholt were all charged with murder for hire, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison. They also face charges of conspiracy to launder money – which could carry up to 20 years in prison – and conspiracy to commit murder for hire.
