Naji Sharifi Zindashti is accused of operating a criminal network that targets dissidents and activists abroad.
An Iranian man has been charged alongside two Canadians with plotting to kill two people, including a defector from Iran, who had fled to the United States.
Prosecutors say Naji Sharifi Zindashti operates a criminal network that targets dissidents and activists abroad
The criminal case is part of what US Department of Justice officials have described as a troubling trend of transnational repression, in which operatives from countries including Iran and China single out dissidents and defectors for 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 murderer two residents of the State of Maryland.
The intended victims of the murder-for-hire plot were not identified, but prosecutors described them as having fled to the US after one defected from Iran.
The plot was ultimately disrupted, the Justice Department said.
« To those in Iran who plot murders on US soil and the criminal actors who work with them, let today’s charges send a clear message: the Department of Justice will pursue you as long as it takes – and wherever you are – and deliver justice, » Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen, the Justice Department’s top national security official, said in a statement.
