May 12, 2023
An Iranian-American woman charged by the United States with aiding a plot designed to kidnap activist Masih Alinejad has been sentenced to four years in prison, a little short of the maximum sentence allowed.
Niloufar Bahadorifar was apologetic in court and told Alinejad that she was a hero and Bahadorifar felt “humiliated” by what she had done. Alinejad was not impressed. Apparently, the judge was not impressed either since she gave Bahadorifar such a heavy sentence.
Prosecutors never charged Bahadorifar with participation in the kidnap plot, just with violating US sanctions by helping the plotters move large sums around the United States to facilitate the plot. Bahadorifar insisted she never knew what the money she was handling was being used for.
The US attorney for the Southern District of New York, Damian Williams, said, “Niloufar Bahadorifar willfully violated sanctions and knowingly provided financial support to Iranian intelligence agents, who in turn were engaged in a plot to kidnap an Iranian human rights activist living in the United States.”
Alinejad appeared in court and asked Judge Ronnie Abrams to set an example by sending 48-year-old Bahadorifar, of Irvine, California, to prison for as long as possible.
Abrams announced a four-year prison term after agreeing with prosecutors who urged her to impose a sentence between 46 and 57 months behind bars. She said she wanted to deter others who might aid the Iranian government in the targeting of individuals in the United States. In addition, Bahadorifar was sentenced to three years of supervised release.
Abrams rejected a request by Bahadorifar’s lawyer, Jeffrey Lichtman, that his client be spared a prison term on the grounds that she, too, was a victim of a “dark, repressive, evil terror regime” that had left her so programmed to do as she was told that she fled Iran only to live for a time in Canada with a “fundamentalist, lunatic, abusive husband.”
Bahadorifar addressed the court, telling Alinejad she was “humiliated to have been involved in any attempt to harm you, even if I was unaware of it.” She added: “You are a hero to all Iranians. I am so sorry.”
Outside court, Alinejad was unimpressed.
“Even trying to use this to save herself? I’m not a hero,” she said. “My heroes are those people who got killed by the Iranian regime, and they never played victims like she did,”
Alinejad is a prominent figure in anti-regime groups and has worked as a contractor for US-funded Voice of America’s Farsi-language network since 2015. She has a considerable following inside Iran, with 8.8 million followers on Instagram. She became a US citizen in October 2019.
In December, Bahadorifar, also a US citizen, pleaded guilty to conspiring to violate US economic sanctions on Iran by enabling access to the US financial system for four Iranians who wanted to kidnap and silence Alinejad by taking her back to Tehran. Authorities said the Iranians used Bahadorifar as a go-between to pay an American private investigator.
The investigator was part of a plan by the would-be kidnapers, working for the government of Iran, to use private investigators in 2020 and 2021 to surveil, photograph, and video record Alinejad and others in her home on multiple occasions, prosecutors said.
Last summer, in a separate case, police arrested a man armed with a loaded assault-style rifle and dozens of rounds of ammunition near her Brooklyn home. Alinejad said a home security video had recorded the man outside her front door, although he was not carrying the rifle at that time.
Prosecutors said that beginning in 2019, Bahadorifar deposited at least $476,000 in more than 120 individual deposits for the kidnap plotters.
At her December plea, Bahadorifar said she had sent funds to the private investigator on behalf of a government official in Iran who was a longtime family friend.
An Iranian intelligence officer and others were charged in New York in 2021 with trying to kidnap Alinejad. The Iranian officials have denied the charge.
The private investigator, who was unaware his employers were Iranian agents, later cooperated with the FBI and was not charged.
Defense attorney Lichtman said as he left the courthouse that he was disappointed, calling it “comical” to think Iranian terrorists were going to be deterred from other sinister plots because of his client’s fate.
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