NEW YORK, NY - After two unsuccessful attempts to assassinate President-elect Donald Trump, an Afghan national has now been indicted in connection with an Iranian plot to assassinate him. The BBC reported that the unsealed indictment alleged the plot was to have occurred before last week’s election.
The suspect, who is believed to still be in Iran, was identified as Farhad Shakeri, 51, who the Department of Justice alleged was tasked with “providing a plan” to kill Trump.
The complaint, filed in Manhattan, saw prosecutors allege that an official in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard contacted Shakeri in September to develop a plan to conduct surveillance on and kill Trump, the BBC said.
“The Justice Department has charged an asset of the Iranian regime who was tasked by the regime to direct a network of criminal associates to further Iran’s assassination plots against its targets, including President-elect Donald Trump,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement.
Besides Shakeri, two other men were indicted in connection with a murder plot against an American journalist who is critical of the regime.
Carlisle Rivera, 49, of Brooklyn, and Jonathon Loadholt, 36, of Staten Island, were charged in connection with the scheme. Both men appeared in federal court in the Southern District of New York last week and are being held pending trial.
A spokesman for the Iranian regime, Esmaeil Baghaei, dismissed the allegations, saying similar accusations about attempts to assassinate US presidents had been made in the past, which they said turned out to be false.
Baghaei added that such claims from the U.S. led to “further complicating the issues between the US and Iran.”
The latest revelation about an assassination plot against the newly elected president comes after a July attempt came within centimeters of killing him, with an assassin’s bullet hitting his ear only split seconds after Trump turned his head. That attempt occurred during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13.
Only weeks later, a man was arrested in West Palm Beach, Florida, after he was spotted with a semi-automatic rifle at a golf course where Trump was playing.
According to the indictment on Shakeri, he was asked to develop a plot to kill Trump in seven days. Prosecutors said Shakeri told investigators he didn’t intend to create a scheme to kill Trump within that seven-day period, so officials with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard put a pause on the scheme.
Shakeri said the Iranian government said it would be easier to attempt the assassination after the election because they assumed Trump would lose and he would have less protection.
Prosecutors said Shakeri came to the US when he was a child. He was deported in 2008 after he spent 14 years in prison for a robbery conviction.
Shakeri used “a network of criminal associates” from his time in prison, which included Rivera and Loadholt, to conduct surveillance on the targets identified by the Iranian government.
Shakeri told Rivera and Loadholt they could earn $100,000 to murder the American journalist, who was not named. She angered the Iranian regime for reporting on IRan’s human rights abuses and corruption, prosecutors said. The same reporter has been targeted in the past.
However, on Friday, journalist Masih Alinejad, who is based in Brooklyn, wrote a social media post claiming the FBI arrested two men for attempting to kill her. She said the two men were seen at the front of her house in Brooklyn.
“I came to America to practice my First Amendment right to freedom of speech–I don’t want to die,” Ms. Alinejad wrote. “I want to fight against tyranny, and I deserve to be safe.”
Besides Trump and the journalist, the indictment also alleged that the Iranian government planned to kill two Jewish American businesspeople living in New York City, who had expressed support for Israel on social media.
Shaker told prosecutors that his Iranian contacts sought to have him plan a mass shooting to target Israeli tourists in Sri Lanka, the BBC reported. That occurred last month, just one year after the Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel.
Shakeri, Rivera, and Loadholt were all charged with murder-for-hire, which carries a maximum sentence of only ten years in prison. They also face charges of conspiracy to commit money laundering, which could lead to 20 years in prison. Finally, they were charged with conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire.
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