New York — A former truck and bus driver accused of plotting to assassinate an Iranian-American writer who authorities said was targeted for death by the Iranian government was sentenced to 10 years in prison on Wednesday by a federal judge.
Jonathan Loadholt, 37, of Staten Island, was sentenced by Judge Louis J. Lehman in federal court in Manhattan after he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit stalking and money laundering in an attack plot targeting Masih Alinejad in Brooklyn in 2024.
James Barnacle, head of the FBI in New York, said in a statement that the Iranian government assigned Loadholt to monitor and eventually assassinate Alinejad, but the FBI arrested him first.
US Attorney Jay Clayton said Loadholt was an American citizen who was driven by greed to kill Alinejad.
Clayton said the Iranian government “tried to silence Ms. Alinejad because of her efforts to stand up to the Iranian regime and expose its discriminatory treatment of women, corruption, and human rights violations.”
In court papers, Loadholt’s lawyers asked for leniency, saying that “a reckless and irrational decision made at the behest of a friend cost him his job, his freedom, and years spent with his family that he will never get back.”
They also wrote that Loadholt was never asked to commit murder and remained largely in the dark about the true plan of surveillance he was asked to carry out, although they acknowledged that he “clearly understood the potential for serious violence.”
In a letter to the judge, Loadholt said he was “deeply ashamed.”
“It was wrong on every level,” he added.
In January, Ludholt’s friend, Carlisle Rivera, apologized in court before he was sentenced to 15 years in prison in the conspiracy.
Alinejad left Iran in 2009 after the country’s disputed presidential election and moved to the United States, where she launched online campaigns encouraging Iranian women to take photos and videos showing their hair in defiance of the religious rule requiring the wearing of the hijab.
Author and contributor to Voice of America and CBS News, Alinejad became a citizen in 2019. She has traveled around the world speaking to women and encouraging others to join her movement for women’s freedom of expression, especially those in Iran.
Last year, she testified in the trial of two men accused of planning to kidnap her from her Brooklyn home and kill her in 2022. The prosecutor said Iran had put a $500,000 bounty on her head. The defendants, both citizens of Azerbaijan, were convicted He was sentenced to 25 years in prison.