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The two Russian mobsters convicted in an international assassination plot targeting the Iranian-American dissident Masih Alinejad were sentenced to 25 years in prison in a New York courtroom on Wednesday.
Rafat Amirov and Polad Omarov were found guilty in Manhattan federal court this March of charges including murder-for-hire and attempted murder in aid of racketeering.
Iran has targeted Alinejad for years because of her advocacy for women’s rights and unflinching criticism of the regime. Alinejad, who in addition to her activism is a journalist and author, has publicized Tehran’s human rights attacks on social media – and demanded change.
Alinejad described the attempted hit during her testimony at Amirov and Omarov’s trial. In late July 2022, Alinejad recalled, she saw a “normal”-seeming man outside her home.
“He was walking and then he had a phone in his hand,” she said during testimony. After noticing him speaking, Alinejad said “what?”, thinking that the man might want to talk to her.
She then realized that the man, later identified as Khalid Mehdiyev, was on the phone. Alinejad apologized and grew concerned.
“I was like, the guy is a little bit suspicious, so I got panicked. I ran to my entrance door,” Alinejad recalled. She scrambled to get the key and then saw him in her front garden,” she told jurors.
Prosecutors said that Amirov and Omarov had paid Mehdiyev $30,000 to kill Alinejad, and the plan was detailed in court proceedings. Mehdiyev took the stand as a government witness at trial.
Omarov, who faced decades in prison, pressed for a maximum sentence of 10 years in court papers. His lawyers said that Omarov suffered from “extreme paranoia” related to succession issues in the Russian mob.
Omarov, as the “blood relative” of a mob leader murdered by his own bodyguard, faced death threats and moved between countries to escape his own would-be killers – and he was convinced that confidants might poison him. The defense said this backdrop provided context for his behavior.
“The stress from this process left Mr Omarov chainsmoking cigarettes to calm himself, unable to eat, and caused him to experience difficulty sleeping for a long period of time,” his defense said in court papers. This, in turn “wreaked havoc on Mr Omarov’s normally rational thought process, transforming the fair and respected street adjudicator into the unrecognizable person”.
Amirov’s lawyers pushed for a sentence of no more than 13 years behind bars. “Mr Amirov was thousands of miles and one or two intermediaries away from the scene of the cooperating witness’s bizarre behavior on the streets of Brooklyn,” his lawyers argued.
They conceded that it was “hair-raising to think that there was an assault weapon and ammunition stowed in a bag in Mr Mehdiyev’s car”, but that “the gun was never removed from the bag and the actions of the cooperating witnesses gave rise to some questions about whether Mr Mehdiyev was primed to act or too lost in his own unknown intentions to act with effect.”
Their plea for leniency also argued that “no one was harmed” in the assassination plot.
The prosecution claimed that the Iranian government paid Amirov and Omarov $500,000 to orchestrate the assassination. Four Iranians, including a brigadier general in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, were indicted in connection with the plot. All are believed to be in Iran.
Prosecutors pushed for 55-year sentences.
