Prosecutors say figures in Tehran hired two men to kill Masih Alinejad, a journalist who had criticized Iran’s head scarf laws.

Prosecutors say that Iranian officials commissioned two purported Russian gang members to kill journalist and Iranian exile Masih Alinejad.

It was July 2022 when 27-year-old Khalid Mehdiyev, a self-proclaimed member of the Russian mob, set off on a mission to assassinate Iranian-American journalist and activist Masih Alinejad

A prosecutor has told jurors that two defendants were hired guns for the government of Iran in a plot to assassinate an Iran-born journalist at her Brooklyn residence three years ago.

The Iranian government wanted to kidnap and kill dissident journalist Masih Alinejad for shining a light on the regime’s torturous oppression of women, a Manhattan jury heard in opening statements

Prosecutors say the men helped direct a murder-for-hire scheme aimed at Masih Alinejad. The trial is expected to show Iran’s efforts to punish those who criticize it, no matter where they are.

Rafat Amirov and Polad Omarev sit during their trial's jury selection, in which the two are charged with murder-for-hire and money laundering in a thwarted Tehran-backed assassination attempt of an Iranian American journalist and activist at a courtroom in New York,

Azerbaijani hitman testifies at trial of two men accused of hiring him to kill a VOA host who is a critic of Iran

I was trying to get into her life,” Khalid Mehdiyev said of targeting activist Masih Alinejad. “I was trying to get the easy way to kill her.”