July 29, 2022
A man armed with a loaded AK-47 was arrested near the Brooklyn home of Iranian dissident journalist Masih Alinejad, the New York Post has reported.
Khalid Mehdiyev, 23, was found with the assault rifle, a high-capacity magazine and $1,100 in cash when he was arrested July 28 after lurking for two days near her home, according to a federal complaint.
The complaint does not name Alinejad, saying only that the accused had focused on an unnamed Brooklyn “residence.” Alinejad, however, later released video from her doorbell showing Mehdiyev on her front porch.
Law enforcement had observed Mehdiyev sitting in a gray Subaru Forester SUV with an Illinois license plate for several hours on July 27 and 28. The Feds said he ordered food to his car and looked inside the windows and attempted to open the front door of the residence.
New York City police officers stopped Mehdiyev later on July 28 after he rolled through a stop sign. The police found he was driving without a license and he was placed under arrest.
The police later searched his vehicle and found the loaded Chinese-made AK-47 with an obliterated serial number, multiple magazines, additional rounds of ammunition and a suitcase with 11 $100 bills. Two other license plates from other states were also found.
Mehdiyev told police he had been staying in Yonkers, but the rent was too high there and he was looking for a new place to live in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Flatbush. He said he had tried to open the front door of the residence so he could knock on an inside door to ask if he could rent a room.
He initially told officers he had borrowed the car and he didn’t know anything about the gun and said the suitcase was not his.
Later, he confessed that the gun was his and he had been in Brooklyn “because he was looking for someone,” according to the complaint.
Mehdiyev was identified as 23 years old. Iran International said he was “reportedly” from the Republic of Azerbaijan, but the Iran Times has found no other information on his nationality or immigration status.
As of the Iran Times publishing deadline, Mehdiyev had been charged only with a single count of possessing a firearm with an obliterated serial number.
Last year, the FBI said four Iranian operatives had hired an American private investigator to track Alinejad as part of a plot to kidnap her from her home, force her onto a boat that would take her to Venezuela, from where they planned to fly her to Iran, in an effort to silence her criticism of human rights abuses in the Islamic Republic.
Alinejad, 45, is best known for leading an effort from exile to pressure the Islamic Republic to drop its dress code. She started her effort several years ago with a Facebook account that encourages women to take photos of themselves in public places with no headcovering.
The US government has not announced that it has a protective shield around Alinejad, but the fact that the police saw her home under surveillance suggests that they are watching over her.
Alinejad fled Iran in 2009 and now has 7.2 million followers on her Instagram account, a volume that seems to spark fear in the regime. In 2019, Amnesty International reported that three of Alinejad’s relatives had been arrested, seemingly in an effort to shut her up.
