Iran International
The testimony of an FBI agent Monday in Manhattan Federal court reveals Iran’s ties with the mobsters who they allegedly hired to kill dissident Iranian American journalist Masih Alinejad.
Supervising special agent Justin Tuerack, who oversees the Iran squad at the bureau, took to the stand Monday, detailing the investigation into digital communications of the suspects.
Tuerack said he analyzed the meta data and IP addresses belonging to the cloud, Whats App, Apple IDs and Google Accounts of defendants Rafat Amirov, Polad Omarov and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Ruhollah Bazghandi and members of his Iran-based network - Haj Taher, Hossein Sedighi and Seyed Mohammad Forouzan.
Federal prosecutors said Bazghandi orchestrated the alleged 2022 plot to kill the journalist in Brooklyn. Bazghandi, the brigadier general in the IRGC was previously chief of the Revolutionary Guard's counterintelligence department.
Orders from Iran to assassinate Alinejad
Khaled Mehdiyev, who pleaded guilty to attempting to assassinate Alinejad, testified that he received direct orders from fellow mobsters Amirov and Omarov. These men were acting on instructions from a network led by Bazghandi, according to prosecutors.
Mehdiyev, the would-be assassin, admitted in court that he had been stalking Alinejad outside her Brooklyn home in 2022 with one objective: “Shoot the journalist, kill the journalist.”
The prosecution claims that the Iranian government paid Amirov and Omarov $500,000 to orchestrate the assassination in retaliation for Alinejad’s human rights activism.
The plot was thwarted on July 28, 2022 when police arrested Mehdiyev of Yonkers, New York, as he passed a stop sign driving away from Alinejad’s house.
Digital evidence
Now web searches, text messages, calls and images stored on the cloud of the suspects is revealing the web of connections between the mobsters and Iran.
FBI-submitted evidence included WhatsApp messages from accounts allegedly belonging to Omarov and Amirov. These texts documented their communications with Mehdiyev, Bazghandi, and the IRGC network regarding the assassination attempt.
On July 23, 2022, Omarov sent a chilling message to Amirov: "we blocked it from both sides, it will be a show once she/he steps out of the house," according to FBI metadata evidence submitted in court.
Amirov's IP address showed him as being located in Iran's Western province of Azerbaijan, according to Tuerack at the time. “God willing we will have good news." he wrote back to Omarov.
A few days later on July 27, 2022 Omarov texted Amirov that Mehdiyev's hit on Alinejad would be his birthday gift, which is July 30 according to Omarov's passport.
"I told him to make this a birthday present for me," Omarov text message read said the FBI.
The conversation between the two would-be assassins reflects Mehdiyev's arrest. arrested.
“The fat one did not get in touch” Amirov texted Omarov in early August, apparently referring to Mahdiyev. "Damn him. I don’t want him to cause trouble,” Omarov texted back.
Rafat the Thief
After Mehdiyev’s arrest in July 2022, google searches from the IRGC network show the men searching “Rafat the Thief”, testified Tuerack.
Notably, this search occurred before any public knowledge of Amirov’s alleged involvement in the plot, a detail federal prosecutors emphasized.
Google map searches of Alinejad home, the pharmacy she used, photos and google searches of her husband Kambiz Foroohar were also made from the accounts affiliated with the IRGC network.
On September 5, 2022, a member of Bazghandi team, Sadighi, sent fellow member Haj Taher a message allegedly addressed to yet another alleged member of their network named Forouzan: "this is addressed to you, your boss and the mafia."
There were youtube searches "who wants to kidnap Masih Alinejad" coming from their work, said the FBI.
Forouzan,, according to Tuerack had three entries to describe a phone number allegedly belonging to Amirov: brotherhood, Rome and Rome/Rafat.
From Sept 14, 2022 - to Nov 27, 2022 - Forouzan allegedly contacted Amirov over text 362 times and made 226 calls to each other.
The Bazghandi Network continued to collect information on Alinejad until at least May 2023. The FBI thwarted two plots prior to the attempt to kill Alinejad, one in 2020 and the other in 2021, also by Iranian state agents trying to kidnap the journalist and take her to Iran.
