Rafat Amirov, Polad Omarov, and Khalid Mehdiyev were arrested for allegedly plotting to kill US-based Iranian journalist Masih Alinejad. The US Justice Department announced the news on Friday saying that the three men were part of an Iran-backed plot to kill Alinejad for her criticism of the Islamic Republic in Iran.

“The victim publicized (the) Iranian government’s human rights abuses, discriminatory treatment of women, suppression of democratic participation and expression and use of arbitrary imprisonment, torture and execution,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said while making the announcement.

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Who are Rafat Amirov, Polad Omarov and Khalid Mehdiyev? 

Rafat Amirov, Polad Omarov, and Khalid Mehdiyev are three men arrested for a plot to kill Iranian journalist Masih Alinejad. US Attorneys, while announcing the arrest, said that the three men were part of an East European criminal gang with ties with the Iranian regime.

Iranian journalist Pouria Zeraati said on Twitter that Rifat Amirov was a resident of Iran. He said that the fact he was arrested in America shows that he was somehow taken out of Iran.

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Al Arabia reports that Mehdiyev was arrested in New York back in 2022 for carrying a rifle outside the home of Alinejad in Brooklyn. Omirov, on the other hand, was arrested last month in the Czech Republic.

In responding to the incident, Alinejad said in a tweet: “I just learned from 12 FBI agents that the 3 men hired by the Iranian regime to kill me on US soil have been indicted. The Islamic Revolutionary Guards have been conducting these terrorist operations for four decades. Islamic Republic is ISIS with oil.”

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