New York — Plot to assassinate an Iranian-American journalist Masih Alinejad At her home in Brooklyn, she came frighteningly close to success, prosecutors told the judge who will sentence two alleged Russian mobsters.
The prosecution is demanding a prison sentence of 55 years Raafat Amirov (46 years old) and Bulad Umarov41, at sentencing Wednesday in Manhattan federal court. Prosecutors said Amirov, from Iran, and Umarov, from Georgia, were Russian mob crime bosses.
Amirov’s lawyers say he should spend no more than 13 years behind bars. Umarov’s lawyers demanded a 10-year prison sentence.
The men were convicted in a two-week trial in March that featured dramatic testimony from a hired gunman and Alinejad, an author, activist and Voice of America contributor.
Alinejad said in a letter to supporters on Tuesday that she plans to appear in court to confront the men who prosecutors say are high-ranking members of the Golichi, a faction of the Russian mafia that has carried out murders, assaults, extortion, kidnapping, robbery and arson in the United States and abroad.
“They will receive their punishment, and I will tell the truth in my impact statement,” she said.
Alinejad, 49, has led online campaigns encouraging women in Iran to record videos of themselves revealing their hair in protest against decisions to cover headscarves in public.
Iranian intelligence officials first planned in 2020 and 2021 to kidnap Alinejad in the United States and take her to Iran to silence her criticism, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors said Iran offered $500,000 in an attempt to kill Alinejad in July 2022 after efforts to harass, maim and intimidate her failed.
Prosecutors said in court documents that the Iranian government targeted Alinejad after she “devoted her life to exposing cruelty, corruption and tyranny in the Islamic Republic.”
When Alinejad, Amirov and Umarov were offered a $500,000 reward, they “appeared completely uninterested in who they were planning to kill and why,” prosecutors wrote.
“Amirov and Omarov were interested in only one thing: their power and wealth,” they said.
Prosecutors said the plot “came frighteningly close to success,” interrupted only by the luck that Alinejad was out of town while a hired gunman continually tried to locate her, and by “the diligence and perseverance of U.S. law enforcement, who discovered and foiled the plot in a timely manner.”
Amirov’s lawyers said in court documents before the sentencing that no one was physically harmed and that their client’s involvement in the conspiracy was “minimal, if not nonexistent.”
Umarov’s lawyers said he deserved leniency because his life was threatened after a relative who was a reputed leader of a “thieves” criminal organization was killed in Russia and Azerbaijan in 2020. Umarov was extradited to the United States in February 2024, a year after he was detained in the Czech Republic.
Alinejad He testified at the March trial She came to the United States in 2009 after she was banned from covering the disputed presidential election in Iran and the newspaper she worked for was closed.
Establishing herself in New York City, she built an online audience in the millions and launched her “My Hidden Freedom” campaign to encourage Iranian women to expose their hair when the morality police are not around.
The prosecution kept the investigation open. In October 2024, they announced charges against a senior Iranian military official and three others, none of whom have been detained.
Alinejad said she had moved nearly twenty times since the assassination plot was discovered.