Overview
- Rafat Amirov and Polad Omarov received 25-year prison terms in Manhattan federal court after March convictions for murder-for-hire and attempted murder in aid of racketeering.
- Prosecutors said the assassination attempt in 2022 came close to succeeding before U.S. law enforcement disrupted it as Alinejad was out of town.
- Officials said the plot followed earlier 2020–2021 plans to kidnap Alinejad and included a $500,000 offer to have her killed.
- Khalid Mehdiyev, the hired gunman who was paid $30,000, testified as a government witness about his efforts to find Alinejad at her Brooklyn home.
- Prosecutors sought 55-year sentences while defense lawyers urged leniency, and the broader case includes four indicted Iranians, among them a Revolutionary Guards brigadier general who is not in U.S. custody.