DOJ indicts 3 people involved in Iran plot to assassinate Trump, kill Jews

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(November 8, 2024 / JNS) — The U.S. Department of Justice on Friday charged three men who Iran says were involved in a plot to assassinate President-elect Donald Trump and kill Jews, Israelis and an Iranian American rights activist.

Prosecutors charged Farhad Shakeri, 51, of Iran; Carlisle Rivera, 49, Brooklyn, NY; and Jonathan Loadholt, 36, of Staten Island, N.Y., each face a combined maximum sentence of 40 years in prison for two counts of murder-for-hire and one count of money laundering.

Shakeri is also indicted on terrorism and sanctions violation charges and could face an additional 60 years in prison.

“The charges announced today reveal Iran’s continued brazen attempts to target U.S. citizens, including President-elect Donald Trump, other government leaders and dissidents critical of the regime in Tehran,” said FBI Director Christopher Wray.

“The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, designated a foreign terrorist organization, is conspiring with criminals and hitmen to target and shoot Americans on U.S. soil, and this will simply not be tolerated,” Wray added.

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Police arrested Loadholt and Rivera on Thursday, and the two appeared in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York the same day. Shakeri remains at large and is believed to be in Iran, according to the Justice Department.

According to the criminal complaint, Shakeri attempted to organize targeted assassinations of Americans and mass murder of Israelis on behalf of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.

Iranian-American Iranian rights activist Masih Alinejad, who the regime previously tried to kill in a foiled 2022 attack in Brooklyn, identified himself on Friday as one of the possible targets of a murder-for-hire plot.

“I have learned from the FBI that two men have been arrested yesterday as part of a new plot to kill me at Fairfield University, where I was scheduled to speak,” he wrote. “I came to America to exercise my First Amendment right to free speech; I don’t want to die.”

In a series of phone calls to FBI agents between September and November, Shakeri said that the Revolutionary Guard had instructed him in mid-September to try to kill Trump and that he was prepared to spend a “large” amount of money to do so.

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The terrorist organization also ordered the killing of two “Jewish businessmen residing in New York” identified in the complaint as “Victim-2” and “Victim-3”.

“Shakeri stated that the Revolutionary Guard provided him with photographs of Victim-2 and Victim-3, which, according to Shakeri, appeared to have come from social media and that Victim-2 and Victim-3 showed his support for Israel,” the complaint states. It is said.

The Revolutionary Guard offered $500,000 per person for the killing of two Jews.

The terror group also instructed it to plan a mass shooting attack on Israeli tourists in Sri Lanka’s Arugam Bay; this plan was thwarted by US and Sri Lankan authorities, who arrested three men in October after Israel and the US warned of an impending attack.

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