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Prosecutors are seeking 55-year prison sentences for Rafat Amirov, 46, and Polad Omarov, 41, for conspiracy to murder Iranian-American journalist Masih Alinejad at his Brooklyn home.
The plot came “close to success,” prosecutors told a judge who will sentence Amirov of Iran and Omarov of Georgia in Manhattan federal court on Wednesday. Prosecutors said both suspects were crime lords in the Russian mob.
Omarov’s lawyers asked for a 10-year prison sentence, while Amirov’s lawyers say he should spend no more than 13 years behind bars.
The men were convicted in a two-week March trial that included dramatic testimony from a hired gunman and Alinejad, an author, activist and Voice of America contributor.
Alinejad said in a message to supporters on Tuesday that she planned to go to court to confront the men, who prosecutors say were high-ranking members of the Gulsey, a faction of the Russian mob that committed murders, assaults, extortion, kidnappings, robberies and arson in the United States and abroad.
“He will receive his punishment and I will tell my truth in my impact statement,” she said.
Alinejad, 49, led an online campaign encouraging women in Iran to record videos exposing their hair to protest the order to cover their heads in public.
Prosecutors said Iranian intelligence officers first conspired to kidnap Alinejad in the United States in 2020 and 2021 and fly him to Iran to silence his criticism.
Prosecutors said Iran offered Alinejad $500,000 in an attempt to kill him in July 2022 after efforts to harass, discredit and intimidate him failed.
Prosecutors said in court documents that Alinejad was targeted by the Iranian government because he had “dedicated his life to exposing the brutality, corruption and tyranny of the Islamic Republic.”
When Alinejad, Amirov and Omarov were offered a $500,000 reward, they “appeared to be completely unaware of whom they were plotting to murder and why,” prosecutors wrote.
“Amirov and Omarov were only interested in one thing: their own power and money,” he said.
Prosecutors said the plot “came close to success”, interrupted only by the luck that Alinejad was out of town while a hired gunman persistently tried to locate him and “because of the diligence and tenacity of US law enforcement, which timely detected and disrupted the plot.”
Amirov’s lawyers said in court documents before sentencing that no one was physically hurt and that their client’s involvement in the conspiracy was “minimal, if not non-existent”.
Omarov’s lawyers said he deserved leniency because his life was in danger after the 2020 killing of a relative who was a reputed leader of the “thief-in-law” criminal organization in Russia and Azerbaijan. Omarov was extradited to the US in February 2024, a year after being detained in the Czech Republic.
Alinejad testified at the March trial that she came to the United States in 2009, after she was banned from covering Iran’s disputed presidential election and the newspaper she worked for was closed.
Establishing herself in New York City, she built an online audience of millions and launched her “My Stealthy Freedom” campaign to encourage Iranian women to uncover their hair when the morality police were not around.
Prosecutors have kept the investigation open. In October 2024, he announced charges against a senior Iranian military officer and three others, none of whom are in custody.
Alinejad said she has moved about two dozen times since the assassination plot was discovered.