by Aaron Keller at Law & Crime
A 45-year-old member of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is wanted by the FBI for plotting to murder former National Security Advisor John Bolton on U.S. soil, the U.S. Department of Justice said Wednesday.
The government believes that alleged plot was “likely” in retaliation for the January 2020 drone strike in Iraq that killed Iranian general Qasem Soleimani.
“Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, through the Defendant, tried to hatch a brazen plot: assassinate a former U.S. official on U.S. soil in retaliation for U.S. actions,” U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves said in a statement. “Iran and other hostile governments should understand that the U.S. Attorney’s Office and our law enforcement partners will do everything in our power to thwart their violent plots and bring those responsible to justice.”
The DOJ described the scheme as a “transnational murder plot.” Prosecutors allege that Shahram Poursafi, a.k.a. Mehdi Rezayi, 45, of Tehran, Iran, “attempted to pay individuals in the United States $300,000 to carry out the murder” of Bolton in either Washington, D.C. or Maryland.
The scheme involved Poursafi allegedly asking a person listed only as “Individual A” to take photos of Bolton, purportedly for a book. Individual A then allegedly connected Poursafi to another person, listed only as a “confidential human source” or “CHS,” to take the photos for between $5,000 and $10,000.
Conversations via an encrypted messaging service…
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