NEW YORK (AP) — Masih Alinejad, the charismatic Iranian dissident and journalist who prosecutors say was targeted by her former homeland’s government for assassination, is set to testify Tuesday at the trial of two men accused in the plot.
Alinejad, an author and contributor to Voice of America, is scheduled to take the witness stand at midday at a Manhattan federal trial that has already featured testimony from the man who says he was hired to kill her in the summer of 2022.
She fled Iran following the country’s disputed 2009 presidential election and became a U.S. citizen in October 2019. In an opening statement last week, a prosecutor said she will testify about why she stands up to the Iranian regime and why she “refuses to back down.”
Her testimony is being presented at the trial of Rafat Amirov and Polad Omarov, natives of Azerbaijan, which shares a border and cultural ties with Iran. The men have pleaded not guilty to multiple charges, including murder-for-hire.
Defense lawyers for Amirov and Omarov have told jurors that prosecutors’ evidence was merely circumstantial.
Khalid Mehdiyev, a government witness who says he worked for the Russian mob before and after he came to the U.S. from Azerbaijan, was arrested after his car was stopped near Alinejad’s Brooklyn home for rolling past a stop sign. An AK-47-style rifle was found in his backseat.
He testified for the government after pleading guilty to multiple charges in Brooklyn and Manhattan courts, including attempted murder, conspiracy and weapons charges.
Mehdiyev, testifying in a monotone, said he was paid $30,000 of the $160,000 he expected to be paid for killing Alinejad. To prepare for the job, he took photographs and video footage outside her Brooklyn residence, where he did surveillance for hours a day sometimes.
He testified that he reached out to her on social media, complimenting her as “the best journalist.”
When asked why he reached out, he answered: “I was trying to have a conversation with her so I can get into her life. … Because I was trying to get the easy way to kill her.”
As he testified last week, Alinejad posted on social media that she was “overwhelmed with mixed emotions.”
“You might find this hard to believe — but for simply posting videos of myself showing my hair and encouraging women in Iran to do the same, the regime sent a man with an AK-47 to my house in Brooklyn to kill me,” she said.
It was a theme delivered to the jury by Assistant U.S. Attorney Jacob Gutwillig at the trial’s start.
He said Alinejad became a target of Iran after encouraging women in Iran to share messages and videos of women protesting the regime by refusing to wear head coverings, or hijabs, in public in Iran, subjecting them to arrest or beatings by the country’s morality police.
“She shared them with millions. She shined a light on the government of Iran’s oppression of women, and that enraged the regime,” Gutwillig said.
The trial’s judge told jurors Monday that they may be deliberating by the end of this week.
