The US Justice Department on Thursday announced that it had foiled a plot by the Iranian Islamic regime to assassinate President-elect Donald Trump in the run-up to the election. Notably, it has filed a criminal complaint [pdf] in a federal court in New York City, accusing the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) of hiring a 51-year-old assassin named Farhad Shakeri to surveil and kill Donald Trump.
Shakeri had selected two other criminals, namely, Carlisle Rivera and Jonathan Loadholt, to carry out the task. While the former remains at large, his selected assassins were presented by the Justice Department before the US court in the Southern District of New York. The trio was charged with murder-for-hire, conspiracy to provide support to a designated foreign terrorist organisation, money laundering and conspiracy to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
The US Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said in a statement: “There are few actors in the world that pose as grave a threat to the national security of the United States as does Iran. The Justice Department has charged an asset of the Iranian regime who was tasked by the regime to direct a network of criminal associates to further Iran’s assassination plots against its targets, including President-elect Donald J. Trump.“
Besides President-elect Donald Trump, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) also conspired to kill a vocal American activist of Iranian descent Masih Alinejad. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is now reportedly taking steps to disrupt the nefarious plans of Iran. The US Justice Department in a presss release informed that the Iranian government has been actively targeting US citizens to take ‘vengeance’ for the elimination of IRGC terrorist Qasem Soleimani in January 2020.
It stated, “The IRGC has publicly stated its desire to avenge the death of Soleimani, and, among its activities, the IRGC plots and conducts attack operations outside Iran targeting U.S. citizens residing in the United States and abroad”. The US Justice Department informed that Farhad Shakeri, hired to murder Donald Trump, was deported from the US in 2008. He had been in prison for 14 years for robbery. Shakeri had used his criminal network in the US to conduct surveillance and conspire to kill the President-elect.
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