Bumbling hitman botched murder of Iranian-American journalist Masih Alinejad in NY: I was trying to get the easy way to kill her

The bumbling, bargain-bin hitman hired to assassinate an exiled Iranian-American journalist botched the high-stakes Brooklyn hit in spectacular fashion — including by trying to open her door, ordering food to his car as he lurked outside her home and then running a stop sign, leading to his arrest.Jurors in Manhattan federal court heard Wednesday how Khalid Mehdiyev — a 27-year-old self-professed member of the Russian mob — inevitably tipped off his target, activist Masih Alinejad, in July 2022 despite trying to cozy up to the author with grammatically incorrect texts.“U the best journalist,” the hitman typed in one text shown to the jury.“Hey.How are you. I wanna make immigrants paper, do u can help for that?” read another, which referred to Alinejad helping with asylum requests.“I was trying to get into her life,” Mehdiyev, a bearded bear of a man originally from the Caspian Sea country of Azerbaijan, said in a cold tone that betrayed no emotion. “I was trying to get the easy way to kill her.” But authorities foiled the cold-hearted and allegedly calculated hitman’s plot on July 28, 2022, when they arrested him in his Subaru Forester SUV with Illinois plates as he rolled through a stop sign — just outside Alinejad’s Flatbush home — after a series of other staggering slipups.

Cops searched the car and found a loaded AK-47 and a ski mask — and it seems like they were just in the nick of time.“I was there to try to kill the journalist,” said Mehdiyev, of Yonkers.Alinejad — who is known for her constant, outspoken criticism of the Iranian regime and how it treats the nation’s women — has survived several assassination attempts since fleeing Iran after its contested 2009 elections.A prominent figure on international Farsi-language satellite channels that often pillory Iranian leadership, she has worked as a contractor for US-funded Voice of America’s Farsi-language network since 2015 and became an American citizen in 2019....