An Iranian man has been charged along with two Canadians with planning to kill two people, including a defector from Iran, who had fled to the United States.
Prosecutors say Naji Sharifi Zindashti runs a criminal network targeting dissidents and activists abroad
This criminal case is part of what US Justice Department officials describe as a troubling trend of transnational repression, in which activists from countries, including Iran and China, target dissidents and defectors with campaigns of harassment, intimidation and sometimes violence.
In this case, prosecutors say, Zindashti conspired with two Canadian men between December 2020 and March 2021 to kill two Maryland residents.
The intended victims of the murder-for-hire plot have not been identified, but prosecutors described them as having fled to the United States after one of them defected from the country. Iran.
The Justice Department said the plot was eventually foiled.
“To those planning murders on American soil in Iran and the criminal actors who work with them, let today’s charges send a clear message: The Department of Justice will pursue you for as long as it takes — and wherever you are — and will deliver justice,” said Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen, chief national security official. At the Ministry of Justice, in a statement.
I heard Sharifi Zindashti's FBI Most Wanted poster
It is believed that Zindashti still lives in Iran.
Officials describe him as a drug trafficker who, on behalf of the Islamic Republic's Ministry of Intelligence and Security, runs a criminal network that organizes assassinations, kidnappings and other transnational acts of repression against critics of the regime.
In a separate but related action, the Treasury Department announced sanctions on Zindashti and several of his associates, which will prevent them from engaging in business transactions in the United States or with a US person.
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The UK also imposed sanctions as British security officials warned 15 Iranians in the UK about threats to their lives in the past two years.
Britain says Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps often recruits organized crime groups to carry out attacks.
According to the US indictment, Zindashti coordinated his efforts with two Canadian men, Damion Patrick John Ryan and Adam Richard Pearson, using an encrypted messaging service to recruit would-be killers to travel to the United States to carry out the murders.
Adam Richard Pearson was also charged Photo: RCMP
Prosecutors say Ryan, who is identified in the indictment as a “full member of the outlaw Hells Angels motorcycle club,” and Pearson are currently jailed in Canada on unrelated charges.
Court records do not identify attorneys for any of the three men, who were all charged in federal court in Minnesota — one defendant was living there “illegally” under an assumed name while the plot was developing — with conspiracy to use interstate commerce. Accomplices in committing murders for hire.
Pearson faces additional firearms offences.
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Foreign Secretary Lord Cameron said Iran had been subjected to sanctions because of this
This is not the first criminal case against Iranian efforts against political opponents of the regime.
Three other men were previously accused of planning a plot, said to have originated in Iran, to kill an Iranian-American author and activist who spoke out against human rights abuses there.
Charges related to a failed plot to assassinate John Bolton, a former national security adviser to the Trump administration, have also been brought in the past.
