2 men face sentencing in plot to kill Iranian American journalist critical of Tehran

By AP 29 October 2025, 7:35 am

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Masih Alinejad greets friends and supporters outside the federal courthouse after testifying at the trial of two men accused of allegedly plotting to kill her in New York, March 18, 2025. (AP/Seth Wenig)

A plot to assassinate Iranian-American journalist Masih Alinejad at her Brooklyn home came “chillingly near success,” prosecutors have told a judge who will sentence two purported Russian mobsters.

Prosecutors are seeking 55-year prison terms for Rafat Amirov, 46, and Polad Omarov, 41, at their sentencing today in Manhattan federal court. Prosecutors say Amirov, of Iran, and Omarov, of Georgia, were crime bosses in the Russian mob.

Lawyers for Amirov say he should not spend more than 13 years behind bars. Omarov’s attorneys called for a 10-year prison sentence.

The men were convicted in a two-week March trial that featured dramatic testimony from a hired gunman and Alinejad, an author, activist and contributor to Voice of America.

Alinejad, 49, led online campaigns encouraging women in Iran to record videos of themselves exposing their hair to protest edicts for head coverings in public. Iran offered $500,000 in a July 2022 attempt to kill Alinejad after efforts to harass, smear and intimidate her failed, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors said in court documents that Alinejad was targeted by the Iranian government after she “dedicated her life to exposing the cruelty, corruption, and tyranny of the Islamic Republic.”