A pair of Russian mob associates were each sentenced to 25 years in prison on Wednesday for their roles in organizing a failed hit on Iranian dissident journalist Masih Alinejad at her New York City home.
Judge Colleen McMahon handed down the terms in Manhattan Federal Court to Rafat Amirov and Polad Omarov, who were found guilty after their March trial of murder-for-hire, attempted murder in aid of racketeering and related charges.
Alinejad, who fled her native Iran in 2009, has been a vocal critic of the Iranian regime’s corruption and human rights abuses, and particularly its punishment of women and girls who refuse to wear mandatory hijabs covering their hair. Time magazine named her as one of its Women of the Year in 2023 for her advocacy.
“I looked these men in the eyes — men who intended to silence me for defending women’s freedom — and am still standing,” Alinejad, 49, said in a statement to the Daily News. “This verdict is a victory for my fellow dissidents who continue to fight for freedom and refuse to be silenced. For too long, dictators have treated America as their personal playground to orchestrate transnational oppression.”
“It’s past time the U.S. government makes clear that U.S. residents are protected, and that if they are targeted on American soil, there will be consequences for the hitmen as well as the regimes that sent them.”
The two men were high-ranking members of the Gulici clan, a faction of the Russian mob, jurors heard at the trial. They had been hired by members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in 2022 to organize Alinejad’s killing in exchange for $500,000, after a series of attempts to kidnap and murder her had failed.
Amirov, 46, a native of Georgia, and Omarov, 41, who is Iranian, hired the Yonkers-based Khalid Mehdiyev, then working at a pizza parlor, as their triggerman, jurors heard at the trial. Mehdiyev sought to track the journalist, waiting outside her Flatbush, Brooklyn, home with an assault rifle for days on end in July 2022.
Alinejad eventually caught on to Mehdiyev’s presence and quickly left to stay with a friend in Connecticut. When Mehdiyev then fled the area, he was pulled over by the NYPD for blowing a stop sign, and cops discovered an assault rifle, 66 rounds of ammunition, a ski mask, gloves and stacks of cash.
Months after Mehdiyev was apprehended, in January 2023 authorities arrested Omarov and Amirov in Europe, and soon after they were extradited to the U.S. Mehdiyev agreed to cooperate against Omarov and Amirov in a plea deal with the feds.
Ahead of the proceeding, federal prosecutors wrote in court papers that “Amirov, Omarov, and their IRGC paymasters sought to soak the Brooklyn streets with the victim’s blood.”
“The IRGC and the leaders of the Islamic Republic intended, through this murder, to simultaneously silence one of the regime’s most vocal, internationally recognized, and effective critics; steal hope from millions of Iranians suffering under the regime’s corruption and oppression; and drive the cold blade of fear into the hearts of its adversaries across the globe,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Jacob Gutwillig wrote in the government’s sentencing submission.
Amirov and Omarov, however, cared only about advancing their positions in the Gulici clan, prosecutors wrote, in the midst of a power struggle stemming from the murder of a high-level Russian mob figure.
“Indeed, Amirov and Omarov appeared completely incurious about who they were plotting to murder or why,” the feds wrote. “Ms. Alinejad’s life, her family and her importance to the cause of freedom for the Iranian people were meaningless to the defendants.
“Amirov and Omarov were interested in one thing only: their own power and wealth.”
