August 06, 2021
The United States has charged four Iranians all believed to be living in Iran and one Iranian-American arrested in California with plotting to kidnap Masih Alinejad, the long-time leader of the campaign against mandatory wearing of head coverings, and spirit her back to Iran.
In the past year, two other Iranian expats have been lured back to the Middle East where they were kidnaped and clandestinely spirited into Iran. One of them has been executed.
Like Alinejad, those two men were politically active in opposing the Islamic Republic.
They were Ruhollah Zam, based in France and organizer of an anti-regime news website, who was lured to Iraq believing he was to receive a large gift to fund his organization. He has been executed. The other was Jamshid Sharmahd, based in California as a leader of a monarchist group. He was lured to Turkey and then spited into Iran. He is still alive.
In May 2014, Alinejad started My Stealthy Freedom, a Facebook page encouraging women to go to public places, take off their head coverings and photograph themselves uncovered. She then posted the photos, encouraging others to do the same. The Facebook page quickly drew widespread attention and amassed huge numbers of likes, passing 600,000 in just 90 days. The movement continues but not with as much intensity as a few years ago. The total number of likes as of July 17 was 1,067,921.
But that hasn’t slowed the regime’s hatred for Alinejad.
The US indictment was handed down in Manhattan July 13. The indictment alleges the plot was part of a wider plan to lure three individuals in Canada and a fifth person in the United Kingdom to Iran. Victims were also targeted in the United Arab Emirates, authorities said. None of those targeted were named, but Alinejad came forward and said the FBI had warned her of the plot eight months ago and worked with her to thwart it.
“I knew that this is the nature of the Islamic Republic you know, kidnapping people, arresting people, torturing people, killing people. But I couldn’t believe it that this is going to happen to me in United States of America,” Alinejad told The Associated Press.
She said the FBI showed her surveillance photos the plotters had taken of her husband, their children and even of her watering flowers in her garden. That suggested that the New York private investigators hired by the conspirators suspected something was wrong and went to the FBI with their surveillance photos.
Alinejad said the FBI asked her to move to a new location to see if the plotters would be able to find her—”and they did,” she said.
Alinejad, who worked for years as a journalist in Iran, fled the country following the disputed 2009 presidential election. She first set herself up in London but later moved to the United States and now lives in Brooklyn.
She is a prominent figure on Farsi-language satellite channels abroad that critically view Iran and has worked as a contractor for US-funded Voice of America’s Farsi-language network since 2015. She became a US citizen in October 2019.
Alinejad said US authorities had come to her last year and told her she was being watched. She said she had been living under US government protection since then, including time spent in various safe houses. She also said the FBI at one point asked her to conduct a live video online to see if Iranian intelligence could track her.
Apart from the four men in Iran who were indicted, the US arrested Niloufar Bahadorifar, known as Nellie in the US, July 1 in California on charges that she provided financial aid including cash of $445,000 plus other services to Iranian residents and entities and some financial services supported the plot.
The indictment said Bahadorifar, 46, works at a California department store.
Bahadorifar pleaded not guilty to the charges lodged at the time of her arrest and was released on bail, authorities said.
The rest of the defendants are fugitives believed to be based in Iran, authorities said.
“Among this country’s most cherished freedoms is the right to speak one’s mind without fear of government reprisal,” US Attorney Audrey Strauss said in New York. “A US citizen living in the United States must be able to advocate for human rights without being targeted by foreign intelligence operatives.”
The Islamic Republic tried to laugh off the charges with ridicule. Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh dismissed the indictment as sounding like something crazy out of a “Hollywood scenario .” That was a curious characterization given that earlier William F. Sweeney Jr., the head of New York’s FBI office, said the indictment sounded a bit like “some far-fetched movie plot.” (In recent weeks, Iran has begun responding to the US by using the same language Washington uses in critiquing Iran.)
Foreign Minister Moham-mad-Javad Zarif took a more aggressive stance, saying the US had no business accusing Iran of kidnaping plots when it was itself engaged in assassinating foreign leaders, citing a plot last year against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and the recent murder of Haiti’s president, though few seriously accuse Washington of involvement in either.
One of the four indicted was identified as an Iranian intelligence officer, though the indictment did not say for what agency he worked. The other three were described as his “assets.” The Iranian intelligence officer, who remains a fugitive, was identified as Alireza Shahvaroghi Farahani, 50.
According to the indictment, Farahani, 50, and the three other defendants tried since at least June 2020 to kidnap Alinejad. If caught and convicted, the four could face life in prison.
Farahani and the network he led on multiple occasions in 2020 and 2021 lied about his intentions as he hired private investigators to surveil, photograph and video record Alinejad and her household members, the indictment alleged. It said the surveillance included a live high-definition video feed of the activist’s home.
The indictment alleged that the government of Iran in 2018 tried to lure her to a third country so a capture would be possible, even offering money to her relatives to try to make it possible. The relatives, the indictment said, refused the offer. Alinejad’s family has been targeted for harassment by the Iranian government, a separate lawsuit filed by the activist in the US alleges.
The others charged in the kidnapping plot were identified as Mahmoud Khazein, 42, Kiya Sadeghi, 35, and Omid Noori, 45.
According to the indictment, Sadeghi researched a service offering military-style speedboats with the idea of spiriting Alinejad from the Brooklyn waterfront to Venezuela.
Khazein, it said, researched travel routes from Alinejad’s Brooklyn home to the waterfront.
The fact that the US Justice Department made all this information publicly available hints that Iran discovered the plotters were being watched and stopped the kidnap plot. That would mean the plotters would never leave Iran and risk capture so the US might just as well reveal all it knew.
Alinejad said the plot wouldn’t stop her from her activism. “I have only one life and I’m not going to live in paranoia. I’m not going to live in fear,” she said. “I have two options feel miserable or make my oppressors feel miserable. So, I choose the second one.”