AMN/ WEB DESK
The US Department of Justice has said that Federal Bureau of Investigations thwarted an Iranian plot to assassinate President-elect Donald Trump. It charged an Iranian national and arrested two American citizens for involvement in a plot to murder the Republican President-elect.
In a criminal complaint, the Department of Justice accused Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) of orchestrating a murder-for-hire plot. It charged 51-year old Farhad Shakeri, alleging he was tasked with providing a plan to kill the US president-elect.
The department described Shakeri an IRGC asset residing in Tehran. It said he immigrated to the US as a child and was deported in 2008 after serving 14 years for robbery. The US government said that Shakeri has not been arrested and is believed to be in Iran.
The Justice Department also apprehended two American citizens Carlisle Riveramand Jonathon Loadholt in Brooklyn and Staten Island in New York. They were charged with being part of a network aiming to silence and kill an American journalist critical of the Iranian regime.
At Shakeri’s direction, they spent months monitoring an American citizen of Iranian descent in the US. The two appeared in court in the Southern District of New York on Thursday. They were ordered detained pending trial. The charges highlight Iran’s audacious attempts to target US citizens and dissidents who criticise Tehran’s regime.