Oct. 22 (UPI) — The U.S. Justice Department has unsealed an indictment on a high-ranking Iranian military official that alleges a string of crimes including the murder-for-hire plot of a female journalist who is a U.S. citizen, according to documents.
“The Justice Department has now charged eight individuals, including an Iranian military official, for their efforts to silence and kill a U.S. citizen because of her criticism of the Iranian regime,” U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a release on Tuesday.
It’s alleged in Tuesday’s superseding indictment that Ruhollah Bazghandi, who is a brigadier general in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard, directed a murder-for-hire plot, money-laundering and evasion of sanctions. Other individuals were indicted, as well.
Iran is “actively targeting nationals of the United States and its allies living in countries around the world for kidnapping and/or execution,” DOJ officials said in the statement announcing the indictment.
Bazghandi — who goes by Roohollah Azimi, as well — also is an ex-intelligence official. The United States says Iranian nationals Fnu Lnu, Hossein Sedighi and Seyed Mohammad Forouzan also took part in alleged criminal activity.
The charges carry a maximum 20-year prison sentence.
According to the attorney general, three of the defendants charged are in U.S. custody.
“We will not tolerate efforts by an authoritarian regime like Iran to undermine the fundamental rights guaranteed to every American,” Garland stated on Tuesday.
The indictment details how Bazghandi and his three alleged co-conspirators allegedly contracted with members of an eastern European criminal network in the “murder-for-hire” plot. According to officials, the goal was to take out a noted, but unidentified, journalist, author and human rights activist — a U.S. citizen of Iranian origin — that’s known to be publicly critical of Iran’s hardline extremist islamic government and a past target of similar assassination efforts.
“Today’s indictment exposes the full extent of Iran’s plot to silence an American journalist for criticizing the Iranian regime,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said Tuesday.
“As alleged, for years, the Government of Iran has attempted to assassinate, on U.S. soil, a U.S. citizen of Iranian origin who is a prominent critic of the Iranian regime,” Damian Williams, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, added on Tuesday.
The case is pending before U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon of New York’s Southern District. However, Bazghandi and others who were indicted remain at large in Iran.
