Incident Details
- Date of Incident
- November 8, 2024
- Targets
- Masih Alinejad (Independent)
Iranian American independent journalist Masih Alinejad in New York in 2023. The Justice Department announced charges on Nov. 8, 2024, against three men it accused of plotting to murder her.
The Department of Justice announced charges on Nov. 8, 2024, against three men it accused of surveilling and plotting to murder New York-based Iranian American journalist Masih Alinejad. Thirteen others have been indicted in connection with murder-for-hire plots against Alinejad.
Alinejad, referred to as “Victim-1” in the DOJ’s news release, confirmed in a social media post that she was the target of the plot. Iranian citizen Farhad Shakeri and U.S. citizens Carlisle Rivera and Jonathon Loadholt have been charged with murder-for-hire, conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire, and money laundering conspiracy. Rivera and Loadholt were arrested on Nov. 7.
Shakeri, who the DOJ said is still at large, was also allegedly tasked with “providing a plan to kill President-elect Donald J. Trump.”
“I just learned from the @FBI that two men were arrested yesterday in a new plot to kill me at Fairfield University, where I was scheduled to give a talk,” Alinejad wrote in the social media post. “I came to America to practice my First Amendment right to freedom of speech—I don’t want to die. I want to fight against tyranny, and I deserve to be safe.”
Alinejad, a U.S. citizen originally from Iran, is a vocal critic of the Iranian government and fled that country in 2009, The New York Times reported.
Shakeri was also charged with providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization — the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps — and conspiring to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and sanctions against the government of Iran.
Since July 2021, thirteen people have been charged in connection with plans to kidnap and murder Alinejad, some of whom the DOJ alleges are connected to the Iranian government.
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