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Four Iranian intelligence officials are charged with plotting to kidnap a replacement York-based journalist critical of Iran, US prosecutors say.
The indictment didn’t name the target, but Masih Alinejad, an Iranian-American author and activist, says it had been her.
The conspirators, who all sleep in Iran and remain at large, also allegedly plotted to lure an individual within the UK and three others in Canada to Iran.
Iran’s government said the allegations were “ridiculous and baseless”.
The US Department of Justice says the Iranian officials sought to lure the New York-based journalist to a 3rd country where the kidnapping was planned.
“To he honest, emotionally I got angry. I got furious. rather than just being scared it made me furious,” Ms Alinejad told BBC News, describing how FBI agents came to her home to inform her that she was “not safe”.
The plotters even offered money to the writer’s relatives in Iran to betray them, which they refused to try to to , the indictment contends.
They hired private investigators to spy on the target’s Brooklyn home and family, and found out a live video feed of the property.
They also researched a service offering military-style speedboats for evacuation from ny City, and maritime routes to Venezuela, an ally of Iran.
“I told myself that for years and years the govt tried to make fear inside the society, tried to scare us,” Ms Alinejad told BBC World TV on Wednesday.
“But this is often the time that really the govt of Iran, the entire intelligence services of Iran are frightened of me.”
The intelligence officials worked to acquire surveillance of the four people targeted in Canada and therefore the UK, consistent with the indictment.
Ms Alinejad, 44, may be a prominent figure on social media and hosts a programme on the US-funded satellite television channel Voice of America Persian.
She runs the My Stealthy Freedom and White Wednesdays campaigns against the mandatory wearing of headscarves for Iranian women.
Addressing the indictment on TV on Tuesday, she said: “Initially, I naturally felt shocked. Then I got worried… Then i assumed about it: we’ve been frightened of the Islamic regime for a lifetime. But now the Islamic regime is frightened of me.”
The indictment says the Iranian officials were aided by an Iranian resident of California, Niloufar Bahadorifar.
She was arrested this month and charged with providing aid to the conspirators and violating sanctions against Iran. She has pleaded acquitted .
William Sweeney, the top of latest York’s FBI office, said it sounded a touch like “some far-fetched movie plot”.
Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said on Wednesday that such “Hollywood scenarios” were “nothing unexpected from America”.
In 2019, the Paris-based dissident journalist Ruhollah Zam was enticed by Iranian agents to visit Iraq, where he was kidnapped and brought to Iran. He was executed last year after being convicted of sedition charges.
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