DOJ Unseals Charges Against Four Iranians for Murder-for-Hire Plot Targeting U.S. Citizen
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) unsealed an indictment on Tuesday, charging members of an Iranian network for their alleged role in a murder-for-hire plot targeting an activist based in the United States.
“Today’s indictment exposes the full extent of Iran’s plot to silence an American journalist for criticizing the Iranian regime,” said FBI Director Christopher Wray in a statement. “According to the charges, a brigadier general in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and a former Iranian intelligence officer, working with a network of conspirators, planned to kill a dissident living in New York City.
“The FBI’s investigation led to the disruption of this plot as one of the conspirators was allegedly on their way to murder the victim in New York,” Wray continued.
The indictment charges Ruholla Bazghandi (also known as Roohollah Azimi), Fnu Lnu (also known as Haj Taher), Hossein Sedighi, and Seyed Mohammad Forouzan with murder-for-hire, conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and conspiring to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and sanctions against the Government of Iran. Bazghandi is an IRGC brigadier general and formerly served as the chief of an IRGC Intelligence Organization counterintelligence office, which the U.S. Secretary of State designated in 2023 as a global terrorist for hostage taking and wrongful detention of U.S. nationals abroad.
The DOJ alleges that in 2022 the four individuals, dubbed the Bazghandi Network, contracted members of an Eastern European criminal organization to murder a victim living in New York City. The indictment does not identify the victim, but Masih Alinejad—a dissident Iranian American journalist living in New York—has been reported as the victim and previously wrote an op-ed about Iranian regime attempts to kidnap her.
Alinejad told the New York Times on Tuesday after the indictment was released that “the Iranian regime always uses criminal gangs to do their dirty jobs beyond their own borders, to get away from punishment, to get away from accountability.”
On 13 July 2022, Amirov allegedly sent targeting information about the victim and her residence to Polad Omarov, who then worked with Zialat Mamedov and Khalid Mehdiyev (a resident of Yonkers, New York, previously charged) to carry out a plot against the victim. Mehdiyev was reportedly paid $30,000 and then procured an AK-47-style assault rifle, covertly surveilled the victim and their family, photographed and videoed the victim’s residence in Brooklyn, and devised schemes to lure the victim out of her house.
“Mehdiyev’s participation in the plot was disrupted when he was arrested near the victim’s home on or about July 28, 2022, while in possession of the assault rifle, along with 66 rounds of ammunition, approximately $1,100 in cash, and a black ski mask,” according to the DOJ.
Members of the organized crime group—Amirov, Omarov, and Zialat Mamedov—were previously arrested for charges in underlying indictments. Amirov and Omarov are in U.S. custody pending trial; Mamedov was extradited from the Czech Republic to the Republic of Georgia to face charges there.
“In January 2023, we unsealed charges alleging that members of an Eastern European crime group engaged in a plot to murder this victim,” said U.S. Attorney Damian Williams for the Southern District of New York. “As we allege, that group was not acting alone. Today, we hold their Iranian masters to account and allege that these Iran-based co-conspirators…directed the murder plot. By charging these Iran-based defendants, we seek to strike another public blow at the heart of the Government of Iran’s efforts to execute the victim—as well as its lethal targeting, intimidation, and repression of other Iranian dissidents critical of the regime in the United States and abroad.”
Bazghandi, Haj Tahier, Sedighi, and Forouzan remain at large. If arrested and convicted, each face at least 10 years in U.S. federal prison for each of the charges they face.
“The Justice Department has now charged eight individuals, including an Iranian military official, for their efforts to silence and kill a U.S. citizen because of her criticism of the Iranian regime,” said U.S. Attorney General Merrick B. Garland in a statement. “We will not tolerate efforts by an authoritarian regime like Iran to undermine the fundamental rights guaranteed to every American.
“Three of the defendants charged in this horrific plot are now in U.S. custody, and we will never stop working to identify, find, and bring to justice all those who endanger the safety of the American people,” Garland continued.
Key to providing information to the alleged co-conspirators in this plot and in other plots dating back to 2020 were private investigators who were hired by the group under false pretenses to provide photographs and video surveillance of the victim, their home, and household members on several occasions, according to the indictments.
Private investigators are sometimes leveraged to help regimes carry out transnational repression—when nation states reach beyond their borders to silence or coerce dissidents, journalists, human rights defenders, and others.
“Transnational repression takes many forms: physical acts of aggression and harassment, forced return of individuals, pressure on relatives in-country, misuse of international law enforcement systems or institutions to facilitate repression, and digital threats such as the misuse of intrusive surveillance software, including commercial spyware,” said U.S. Ambassador Michèle Taylor at a United Nations Human Rights Council session in June 2024.
Sandra Stibbards, owner and president of Camelot Investigations, vice chair of the ASIS Investigations Community, says that this situation of investigators being used to carry out transnational repression is not new and comes down an investigator’s ethics.
“In my practice, this is precisely why I run a background check on every potential client,” Stibbards explains. “Verifying the individual or company you’re working for is crucial to avoid aiding those with malicious intentions.”
Stibbards adds that she never accepts cases without understanding who the client is, what they do, why they need the investigation, and what the ultimate goal of the investigation is.
“For overseas clients, a strong recommendation from a trusted colleague is a must before I even consider engaging with them,” she says. “There are far too many risks in unintentionally providing information to individuals who might misuse it with harmful consequences.”
In 2022, Security Management spoke with James Dennehy, then special agent in charge of the FBI New York Field Office’s Counterintelligence and Cyber Division, about the use of private investigators to carry out transnational repression. China, Egypt, Iran, Russia, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey are all known to have targeted individuals through this effort.
“The Iranians in particular and the Chinese—both have been successful in getting their hands on those dissidents, forcing them back to their home country, or in some instances, literally snatching them and grabbing them and putting them on a plane back to their home country,” Dennehy said. “In a few examples, the Iranians have tried and convicted those individuals, who have been sentenced to death or sentenced to life imprisonment.”
