US sanctioned four Iranian intelligence operatives for attempted kidnapping of journalist Masih Alinejad in New York

The US Treasury Department sanctioned this Friday four members of the Iranian secret service who targeted kidnap Iranian-American journalist Masih Alinejad in New York.

Those sanctioned are accused of being part of a network which also targets Iranian dissidents in other countries “as part of a Broad campaign to silence critics of the Iranian government “Treasury said in a statement.

Specifically, the United States appointed the senior intelligence officer Alireza Shahvaroghi Farahani, a resident of Iran, as head of a structure that planned the failed kidnapping of Alinejad, a 44-year-old journalist living in New York and she has been a feminist activist since the origins of the anti-veil movement in Iran.

They were also part of the network Mahmoud Khazein, Kiya Sadeghi and Omid Noori.

Organization targets Iranian dissidents in US, UK, Canada and UAEsaid the note.

According to the Treasury, in addition to the “well-documented” role of the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security (VEVAK) in the “internal repression”, the operation also revealed the “destructive” role of the intelligence apparatus in the persecution of dissident Iranians and its attempts to return them to this country.

In this direction, sanctioned the four agents for having “acted or planned to act” for or on behalf of the VEVAK, which was already designated in 2012 by the United States as responsible or complicit in the serious human rights violations committed by the government of Tehran against its city ​​since June 12, 2019.

Sadeghi, the note said, served as the contact between the network and a private investigator who investigated the options for transporting the reporter in military-style speedboats from New York to Venezuela.

In turn, Noori was responsible for paying the investigator, while Khazein investigated the possible routes from the victim’s home to the points of his “extraction”.

Already last July, the US Department of Justice announced the indictment of four “Iranian intelligence agents” in the journalist’s case. “The Iranian government’s kidnapping plan is another example of its continued attempt to silence critical voices wherever they are,” The director of the Office for the Control of Foreign Assets (OFAC), Andrea M. Gacki, was quoted in the statement.

For the civil servant, the attack on Iranians abroad shows that the “repression” of the Tehran regime “extends beyond the borders” of this country.

(With information from EFE)

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