Prosecutor says at trial that Iran put $500,000 bounty on head of Iranian-American journalist

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NEW YORK (AP) — The government of Iran put a $500,000 bounty on the head of an outspoken Iranian-American journalist to fund an assassination plot to silence her, a prosecutor told jurors Wednesday at the closing of a murder-for-hire trial.

The purported hitman was arrested in July 2022 before he could kill journalist Masih Alinejad, leading to a trial of two Russian mobsters who organized the murder plot, Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Lockard told a Manhattan federal jury.

Lockard spoke a day after Alinejad testified that she endured a barrage of threats after launching online campaigns from her Brooklyn home to inspire women in Iran to rebel against government edicts.

Alinejad left Iran for America in 2009 after the country's disputed presidential election, quickly building a social media following of millions of people worldwide.

She said she got deluged by videos sent to her by women in Iran after she challenged them to film themselves with their hair exposed when Iran's morality police were not around.

Her campaign, dubbed “My Stealthy Freedom,” encouraged women to rebel against Iran's edict that their hair must always be covered in public with a hijab to conform to religious requirements.

Lockard said the government of Iran labeled the journalist as an enemy of the state and for years tried to harass, smear and intimidate Alinejad.

“When those efforts failed, the government of Iran put a $500,000 bounty on her head,” he said.

He said two high-level members of the Russian mob — Rafat Amirov and Polad Omarov — were paid by the government of Iran to organize a plot to kill Alinejad in 2022. The evidence, he added, was overwhelming.

The men, both natives of Azerbaijan, did not commit any of the multiple crimes they were charged with, their lawyers told the jury in closing arguments.

Attorney Michael Martin, representing Amirov, said there was no dispute that Iran was targeting Alinejad, but his client was not part of any plot.

He attacked the credibility of Khalid Mehdiyev, who testified last week that he was paid $30,000 to kill Alinejad, but his task was interrupted when police pulled him over for rolling through a stop sign. A loaded AK-47 was in his backseat.

Martin called Mehdiyev a “manipulative, violent, lying person.”

Attorney Elena Fast, representing Omarov, said Mehdiyev was a “clown as a hitman” who never intended to kill Alinejad.

“This was a plan to scam and not to murder,” she said, claiming that anyone communicating about a plot was merely trying to collect money offered for a killing with no intent to do anything in return.

After prosecutors deliver a rebuttal argument on Thursday, instructions on the law will be read to the jury, which will begin to deliberate afterward.