WOMAN ‘FUNDED IRANIAN PLOT TO KIDNAP DISSIDENT’
Niloufar Bahadorifar was the unwitting conduit in the scheme, court told. By Benjamin Weiser
Four Iranians who plotted to kidnap a prominent Iranian American journalist in Brooklyn paid a private investigator to watch their target, using a woman in California as a go-between, authorities said. That woman, Niloufar Bahadorifar, pleaded guilty in Manhattan on Thursday to a charge of conspiracy to violate US economic sanctions on Iran by helping channel money to the investigator.
In court, Ms Bahadorifar said that while she made the payment, she was unaware it was used to pay the investigator to conduct surveillance. And prosecutors have not accused her of participating in the plot to abduct the journalist, Masih Alinejad, an outspoken critic of the Iranian government’s human rights abuses and its treatment of women and political opponents.
Ms Bahadorifar’s lawyer, Jeffrey Lichtman, said after the hearing that his client was not cooperating with the government. “She simply has no information to provide about the kidnapping charges,” he said.
“When Iran’s terrorist leaders aren’t slaughtering their own people,” he said, “they’re travelling the globe trying to kill their critics, including the despicable manipulation of Ms Bahadorifar by an old family friend. Instead of the world offering concessions, we should finally be ending this cancerous regime,” he said.
FBI officials say the case that entangled Ms Bahadorifar is one of a growing number in which repressive governments like Iran and China have hired private investigators, often unwittingly, to locate, harass, threaten and even repatriate dissidents who are living lawfully in the United States, The New York Times reported last month.
Authorities have said they are continuing to investigate the plot against Alinejad, which the FBI disrupted and exposed last year, and another, more recent threatening event that also appeared aimed at the journalist.
In July, a man was arrested after he was found with a loaded AK-47-style assault rifle outside Alinejad’s Brooklyn home. The man, Khalid Mehdiyev, had been behaving suspiciously near the house for two days, and he was later stopped by New York City police after failing to obey a stop sign, according to a criminal complaint filed in US District Court in Manhattan.
Police found a suitcase on the rear seat of Ms Mehdiyev’s car containing the assault rifle with an obscured serial number, the complaint said. The rifle had a round in the chamber and a magazine attached.
“I came here in America to be safe,” Alinejad told the Times after Ms Mr Mehdiyev’s arrest.
“First, they were trying to kidnap me. And now I see a man with a loaded gun trying to enter my house. I mean, it’s shocking.”
Alinejad said she and her family were moved to a safe location. Mr Mehdiyev has pleaded not guilty.
The four defendants charged in the kidnapping plot include an Iranian government intelligence official and three so-called intelligence assets, according to the US attorney’s office in Manhattan. The four are based in Iran and remain at large.
According to an indictment, the Iranians found the investigator through his website in 2020, and said they sought his services on behalf of a client who was looking for an individual from Dubai, United Arab Emirates, who had fled to avoid repaying a debt. The investigator, Michael McKeever, told the Times that he accepted the assignment without realising he was working for Iranian intelligence.
After the FBI learned of the plot and of Mr McKeever’s surveillance activities, it obtained his cooperation and he was not charged.
Ms Bahadorifar was not accused of participating in or having any knowledge of the kidnapping plot.
In court, she indicated to the judge, Ronnie Abrams, that she had sent money to the investigator via PayPal on behalf of a government official in Iran who was a long-standing family friend.
She did not identify the official, but prosecutors have said in court papers that since at least 2014, Ms Bahadorifar received regular payments from Mahmoud Khazein, one of the defendants described in the indictment as an Iranian intelligence asset.
According to the indictment, Mr Khazein runs a group of companies that import marine, construction and agricultural equipment to Iran, mostly for government entities, and he has advised the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security. In court, a prosecutor, Jacob H Gutwillig, told the judge that had the case gone to trial, the government would have sought to prove its case with financial records related to the surveillance of Alinejad, data, email — and surveillance photographs.
Ms Bahadorifar also pleaded guilty to one count of “structuring”, or arranging financial transactions to evade reporting requirements. She said she made cash deposits totalling US$476,000 (16 million baht) in her account in amounts of less than $10,000 each. Judge Abrams set her sentencing for April 7.