US Attorney General Merrick Garland said the case involved a “criminal network” that was intended to help Iran carry out its plot to kill multiple people in the United States.
The US government has charged an Iranian citizen in connection with an alleged plot to kill Donald Trump before presidential election. He is also charged with two Americans he recruited to carry out assassination attempts.
The BBC reports on this.
On Friday, November 8, the Justice Department unsealed an indictment against 51-year-old Farhad Shakeri, alleging that he was tasked with “devising a plan” to kill Trump. Shakeri was not arrested. He was deported from the United States in 2008 and is believed to be in Iran.
In a criminal complaint filed in Manhattan, prosecutors allege that in September, an official in Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) instructed Shakeri to devise a plan to spy on and kill Trump.
“The Justice Department has indicted an Iranian regime agent who was tasked by Tehran to run a network of recruits to assist Iran in plots to assassinate its targets, including President-elect Donald Trump,” U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement.
The Justice Department said in a statement that two more individuals, Americans aged 49 and 36, were indicted for allegedly recruiting an American journalist who was an outspoken critic of Iran.
The two suspects, Carlisle Rivera and Jonathan Loadholt, were arrested yesterday and will be held pending trial by a court order.
FBI agents spoke with an Iranian who told them he received orders to kill critics Iranian regime. At the same time, Shakeri claimed that he had no intention of following the orders of the IRGC.
According to investigators, Shakeri was tasked with coming up with a plan to kill Trump, an American journalist, and two Jewish-American businessmen living in New York who had spoken out in support of Israel on social media. He was also to plan a mass shooting against Israeli tourists in Sri Lanka in October 2024, presumably on the anniversary of the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel.
All three defendants were charged with contract killing, conspiracy to commit murder, and money laundering. The combined punishment for these crimes is up to 40 years in prison, which is highly likely to result in life imprisonment for the defendants.
Recall that in September, there was a second assassination attempt on Donald Trump during the election campaign. According to Trump, law enforcement agencies managed to detain the armed man with the help of a witness.
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