by Harriet Alexander at The Daily Mail
New York City prosecutors have charged four Iranian spies with plotting to kidnap a U.S. journalist from Brooklyn, smuggling her out of the city on a speedboat then sailing down to Venezuela before flying to Tehran, after she criticized the regime for its human rights abuses.
Masih Alinejad, 44, a producer with Voice of America, told NBC News that she was the target of the plot. She was not named in court documents.
The conspirators, described as intelligence officials, had also plotted to lure a person in the UK and three others in Canada to Iran, an indictment said. They had all also been critical of Iran.
William F. Sweeney Jr., the head of the F.B.I.’s New York office, said: ‘This is not some far-fetched movie plot. We allege a group, backed by the Iranian government, conspired to kidnap a US-based journalist here on our soil and forcibly return her to Iran. Not on our watch.’
A federal indictment describes a plot that included attempts to lure Alinejad to Venezuela to capture her, and forcibly render her to Iran. The Iranians had a live feed of her home.
The Iranians researched how to get the author out of New York, according to the charging documents. One of the four researched a service offering ‘military-style speedboats for self-operated maritime evacuation out of New York City, and maritime travel from New York to Venezuela, a country whose de facto government has friendly relations with Iran,’ the Justice Department said.
Alireza Shahvaroghi Farahani is described in charging documents as the spy chief. He worked with Mahmoud Khazein and Omid Noori plus Kiya Sadeghi. They all live in Iran and remain at large.
‘I’ve been targeted for a number of years but this is the first time that such an audacious plot has been hatched and foiled,’ she told NBC by email…
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