Asif Merchant is accused of seeking a hitman to kill unnamed officials as revenge for US assassination of Iranian military chief.
The United States has charged a Pakistani man, who it alleges has ties to Iran, with plotting to carry out political assassinations.
Asif Merchant travelled to New York in June seeking to hire a hitman to kill a politician or a US government official in revenge for the 2020 assassination of a senior Iranian military commander, according to a statement issued by the US Justice Department on Wednesday.
Merchant, who prosecutors allege spent time in Iran before travelling to the US from Pakistan, was charged with murder for hire in federal court in New York’s Brooklyn borough.
He was arrested in July as he prepared to leave the US, after having told the potential hitman that he would provide further instructions, including the names of the intended targets, in August or September after he returned to Pakistan.
Avraham Moskowitz, a lawyer for Merchant, declined to comment on Tuesday when reached by the Associated Press news agency.
The name of the intended target has not been revealed but the attorney general said no evidence has emerged to link Merchant with the July 13 assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania.
‘Unrelenting efforts to retaliate’
According to the charges, Merchant’s hunt for a hitman was linked with a longstanding urge by Iran to retaliate against the US over the 2020 killing of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp’s (IRGC) top commander Qassem Soleimani.
“For years, the Justice Department has been working aggressively to counter Iran’s brazen and unrelenting efforts to retaliate against American public officials for the killing of Iranian General Soleimani,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement.
Court documents do not name the alleged targets of the plot. Merchant told a law enforcement informant that there would be “security all around” one target, according to the criminal complaint.
“We have not received any reports on this matter from the US Government. However, it is evident that the modus operandi in question contradicts the Iranian Government’s policy of legally prosecuting the murderer of General Soleimani,” the Iranian mission to the United Nations in New York said in a statement to Reuters news agency.
Trump, who as president approved the drone strike that killed Soleimani, was discussed as a potential target of the plot, but the scheme was not conceived as a plot to assassinate him, a source told Reuters.
Garland said that investigators have found no evidence that Merchant had any connection to the shooting in Pennsylvania earlier this year, which officials have said was carried out by a lone 20-year-old gunman.
Thwarted
Federal officials identified Merchant, 46, as a Pakistani citizen who has said he has a wife and children in Iran and who traveled frequently to Iran, Syria and Iraq.
Law enforcement thwarted his plan before any attack was carried out, they noted.
An individual that Merchant contacted in April to help assist with the plot reported his activities to law enforcement and became a confidential informant, according to the complaint.
Merchant told the informant his plans also included stealing documents from one target and organising protests in the US, prosecutors allege.
The spokesperson for Pakistan’s foreign ministry, Mumtaz Zahra Baloch, said in a statement that the government was in touch with US authorities over the matter.