Pakistani Man Arrested in Alleged Plot to Target US Officia
A Pakistani man with ties to Iran has been arrested for allegedly plotting to attack a US official in retaliation for the US execution of Revolutionary Guards commander Qassem Soleimani, the Justice Department announced on Tuesday.
Asif Raza Merchant, 46, allegedly attempted to hire a hitman to assassinate a politician or a US government official in the United States, according to a department statement.
“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,” Garland told reporters.
Soleimani, the mastermind of Iran’s foreign military operations, was assassinated in a US drone strike near Baghdad in January 2020.
Iranian officials have regularly promised to exact “revenge” for the assassination.
“The Justice Department will spare no resource to disrupt and hold accountable those who would seek to carry out Iran’s lethal plotting against American citizens,” Garland said on Monday.
The intended victim was not revealed, but the attorney general stated that no information has emerged linking Merchant to the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13.
FBI Director Christopher Wary stated that the Pakistani national had “close ties to Iran” and that the alleged murder-for-hire scheme was “straight out of the Iranian playbook.”
Another FBI officer stated that the killers Merchant allegedly attempted to hire were in fact undercover FBI agents.Merchant was arrested on July 12 as he prepared to leave the country.
Mumtaz Zahra Baloch, a spokesperson for Pakistan’s foreign ministry, said in a statement that the administration was in contact with US officials about the subject.
In August 2022, the United States charged a Revolutionary Guards member with planning to murder former US National Security Advisor John Bolton.
According to the Justice Department, Shahram Poursafi, who is still at large, offered to pay $300,000 to a person in the United States to assassinate Bolton.
Iran has denied the allegations that it plotted to assassinate Bolton as “fiction.”
AFP
