Mediaboss Marketing

A man charged with participating in a plot hatched in Iran to assassinate Masih Alinejad, an Iranian American human rights activist and a sharp critic of Irans repression of women, has been extradited to the United States, American authorities said on Wednesday.

The man, Polad Omarov, 39, was turned over to representatives of the U.S. government at Vaclav Havel Airport in Prague on Wednesday morning, Reuters reported, citing a statement from the Czech Justice Ministry. He was arrested in the Czech Republic in January 2023.

A federal indictment unsealed in New York last year said Mr. Omarov and three co-conspirators were part of an Eastern European criminal organization known by its members as Thieves-in-Law, which has ties to Iran and in 2022 was given the assignment to kill Ms. Alinejad, a journalist in Brooklyn.

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan have said that Mr. Omarov, a citizen of Georgia, held a leadership role in the organization and resided in Eastern Europe.

This matter is going to be over today, brother, Mr. Omarov said in a message to one of his co-conspirators in July 2022, shortly before another plotter, Khalid Mehdiyev, an Azerbaijani man living in Yonkers, N.Y., was found with a loaded AK-47-style assault rifle outside Ms. Alinejads house, the indictment charged. I told them to make a birthday present for me, Mr. Omarov wrote.

At the time, Mr. Mehdiyev, at the direction of Mr. Omarov and another man, Rafat Amirov, was preparing imminently to execute the attack on Ms. Alinejad, the indictment said.

We are having trouble retrieving the article content.

Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit andlog intoyour Times account, orsubscribefor all of The Times.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

Already a subscriber?Log in.

Want all of The Times?Subscribe.

Read the original post:
Man Extradited to U.S. in Suspected Iranian Plot to Kill Activist - The New York Times