Mobster duo found guilty of hiring bungling pizza delivery hitman in botched hit on Iranian dissident Masih Alinejad

Two eastern European gangsters were convicted Thursday of ordering a bumbling hitman to kill exiled Iranian-American dissident Masih Alinejad in Brooklyn — at the behest of the barbarous Iranian regime.Rafat Amirov, 45, and Polad Omarov, 40, took $500,000 of “blood money” from the Iranian government before hiring Khalid Mehdiyev, a 27-year-old self-professed member of the Russian mob, to clip the activist at her Brooklyn home, prosecutors say.But authorities foiled the brazen plot on July 28, 2022, when they arrested Mehdiyev — carrying a loaded machine gun and a ski mask — just outside Alinejad’s Flatbush home.“I was there to try to kill the journalist,” Mehdiyev cooly testified during a week-and-a-half-long trial in Manhattan federal court.The bearded bear of a man botched the high-stakes hit in spectacular fashion, including by ordering food to his Subaru Forester SUV with Illinois plates parked outside her home, jurors heard.He also wandered around her porch without his mask, and ran a stop sign while fleeing the scene, leading to his arrest.Alinejad is known for her outspoken criticism of the Iranian government and for encouraging women to defy the country’s draconian law forcing them to wear mandatory headscarves, or hijabs, or risk imprisonment.“For these so-called crimes, the Iranian regime has spent years attempting to harass, smear, intimidate and even kidnap Ms.

Alinejad,” prosecutor Michael Lockard said in his closing statement.“And when those efforts failed, the government of Iran put a $500,000 bounty on her head.”Alinejad, 48, has survived several other assassination and kidnapping attempts since fleeing Iran in 2009, US officials say.The human rights activist took the stand Tuesday and described the chilling moment she saw the amateurish assassin staring straight into her eyes through the sunflower patch on her front porch.

But she told jurors she figured the “gigantic” hitman was just admiring her garden.Mehdiyev, wh...