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Iranian Operatives Planned to Kidnap a Brooklyn Author, Prosecutors Say

89 points by ent101 5y ago

res0nat0r 5y ago
From her twitter: https://twitter.com/AlinejadMasih/status/1415115191084322816 https://twitter.com/AlinejadMasih/status/1415115191084322816
- notsureaboutpg 5y ago
  She's an "author"? Seems a bit crazy to me
- sharken 5y ago
  After reading that the Brooklyn author is indeed of Iranian origin, this story made a lot more sense. It seems that middle east regimes think they can control any of their citizens no matter where they live. I wonder if the US will impose sanctions on Iran, or if the US administration is not that eager to send that message.
  - BBC-vs-neolibs 5y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_sanctions_against_Iran#Biden_presidency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_sanctions_agains...
bpodgursky 5y ago
This would have been quite the test for the Biden administration. I'm honestly curious what action they would have taken had it succeeded.
- RyJones 5y ago
  sent them another plane load of cash, probably
  - bufferout 5y ago
    Please keep Facebook-style misinformation off here: https://www.factcheck.org/2019/03/obama-didnt-give-iran-150-billion-in-cash/ https://www.factcheck.org/2019/03/obama-didnt-give-iran-150-...
    - atatatat 5y ago
      Obama didn’t carry out any part of it on his own. The deal did lift some sanctions, which lifted a freeze on Iran’s assets that were held largely in foreign, not U.S., banks. And, to be clear, the money that was unfrozen belonged to Iran. It had only been made inaccessible by sanctions aimed at crippling the country’s nuclear program. Secondly, $150 billion is a high-end estimate of the total that was freed up after some sanctions were lifted. U.S. Treasury Department estimates put the number at about $50 billion in “usable liquid assets,” according to 2015 testimony from Adam Szubin, acting under secretary of treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence. The part that the meme gets right, though, is that the deal didn’t get congressional approval.
    - Thorondor 5y ago
      I agree that the comment you're responding to was off-topic, but calling it "Facebook-style misinformation" goes too far. It's well documented that the Obama administration sent multiple plane loads of cash to Iran in 2016. [0][1][2] [0] https://www.cnn.com/2016/08/03/politics/us-sends-plane-iran-400-million-cash/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2016/08/03/politics/us-sends-plane-iran-... [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-sent-cash-to-iran-as-americans-were-freed-1470181874 https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-sent-cash-to-iran-as-americ... [2] https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-sent-two-more-planeloads-of-cash-to-iran-after-initial-payment-1473208256 https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-sent-two-more-planeloads-of...
      - staunch 5y ago
        1. The money was Iran's to begin with and not U.S. money 2. The money was being returned to Iran based on an international agreement Anyone that fails to include these critical facts is (most likely) intentionally participating in the spread of misinformation/propaganda.
- staunch 5y ago
  This is a line in the sand that the U.S. government should not allow to be crossed going forward. All U.S. citizens anywhere, and anyone on U.S. soil, should be protected. This is one of the very good reasons to have such powerful intelligence agencies and military forces, to literally safeguard freedom. The U.S. is not a free country if its people have to live in fear of foreign dictators and theocrats. Had she been kidnapped or hurt, Biden would be right to respond with military force against everyone responsible.
  - rjzzleep 5y ago
    Germany on the other hand has an official policy that if you have two passports they will not interfere with the other countries policies whatever they choose to do with their citizen. Canada has had a different stance on that, although arguably still weak, they at least consider their dual citizens abroad to be under their own jurisdiction.
    - bpodgursky 5y ago
      On one hand, the behavior would be different if _literally abducted from German soil_. On the other hand, the German government has almost no power to project force abroad so it might not matter much (aside from some sanctions or whatever).
redis_mlc 5y ago
This really happens. There was a famous case around 20 years ago where a young gf left a Middle East bf, moved to another country, and he sent an operative to kill her. Then there's KSA, where it's routine to send a jet for "wayward" family, and imprison them.
gorgoiler 5y ago
> The Iranian intelligence official [based in Iran] used private investigators to surveil, photograph and video record the author, the government said It is a shame that the NYT doesn’t include more information about these third party PIs — presumably licensed US investigators? If you help someone who is planning to commit a crime, that feels like you too have done something wrong. I wonder if the indictment also includes the PIs? The financial world has had KYC / Know Your Customer laws for a while now. Surely the same goes for PIs, with penalties for helping the bad guys? Edit: one conspirator was a Californian and has been charged with “providing financial services in support of the plot”, though it’s not clear if they were negligent in due-diligence or an outright Iranian government villain: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jul/13/iran-intelligence-officer-kidnap-plot-us-journalist https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jul/13/iran-intelli...
- unishark 5y ago
  A PI can be just a guy with a car and a camera though. You can't expect them to be able to handle the degree of regulations banks have. Your link says they were hired under false pretenses. There's more detail on the allegations here: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/iranian-intelligence-officials-indicted-kidnapping-conspiracy-charges https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/iranian-intelligence-official... > As alleged, Bahadorifar provided financial and other services from the United States to Iranian residents and entities, including to Khazein, since approximately 2015. Bahadorifar facilitated access to the U.S. financial system and institutions through the use of card accounts and offered to manage business interests in the United States on Khazein’s behalf. Among other things, Bahadorifar caused a payment to be made to a private investigator for surveillance of Victim-1 on Khazein’s behalf. While Bahadorifar is not charged with participating in the kidnapping conspiracy, she is alleged to have provided financial services that supported the plot and is charged with conspiring to violate sanctions against Iran, commit bank and wire fraud, and commit money laundering. Bahadorifar is also charged with structuring cash deposits totaling more than approximately $445,000. > Farahani, Khazein, Sadeghi and Noori are each charged with: (1) conspiring to kidnap, which carries a maximum sentence of life in prison; (2) conspiring to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) and sanctions against the government of Iran, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison; (3) conspiring to commit bank and wire fraud, which carries a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison; and (4) conspiring to launder money, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. Bahadorifar is charged with counts two, three and four, and is further charged with structuring, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison. A federal district court judge will determine any sentence after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.
hef19898 5y ago
Good that this stuff gets prosecuted. And now we can continue to do that with Turkey, Saudi and every other country not respecting nations sovereignty in doing the same thing with their dissidents abroad.
- cdstyh 5y ago
  This comment is hilarious. It highlights Americans selective view of history and ignorance of what their country regularly does.
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    > This comment is hilarious. It highlights Americans selective view of history and ignorance of what their country regularly does. Or the GP commenter thought it went without saying that prosecuting other countries intelligence services for this stuff will happen as a prerequisite to prosecuting our own intelligence services for this stuff.
  - hef19898 5y ago
    First time anyone saw me as an American, not sure what to make of it. Now that you mentioned it, the world should never have let the US get away with the war on terror and everything that came with it. But hey, that's the world we live in now, one of our own making.
helaoban 5y ago
Just the casus belli for a war with Iran we were looking for! "Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!"
aaron695 5y ago
USA does this all the time. They do it to criminals, but if Iran considers this author a criminal then the kidnap part is not really an issue - This was securities and mail fraud - "alleging that he had been illegally abducted by agents of the United States government. Reed claimed that he had been living in Bimini in the Bahamas, engaging in real estate transactions, when CIA agents enticed him by deceitful means upon a private airplane destined not for Nassau, as he had been told, but for Fort Lauderdale, Florida. According to Reed, the agents made him lie on the floor of the small plane for thirty minutes, holding a cocked gun to his head and threatening to blow his brains out." https://casetext.com/case/united-states-v-reed-31 https://casetext.com/case/united-states-v-reed-31
- dmos62 5y ago
  I think it's important to realise that it's not only the US-hostile regimes that do this.
  - 0xdeadb00f 5y ago
    Not only US-hostile regimes, but the US regime itself!
- relativ575 5y ago
  > USA does this all the time. They do it to criminals, but if Iran considers this author a criminal then the kidnap part is not really an issue - It's criminal because it targeted an American citizen, on American soil. Why isn't that so hard to get? It wouldn't be criminal if it happened in Teheran, since that would be under a different sovereignty.
  - trasz 5y ago
    It's not hard to get, it's just that it's rather silly - should North Korea have the right to kidnap someone allegedly targeting NK citizens? The only reason it works is because the US is the bully. Same reason american war criminals and terrorists usually don't get prosecuted.
anomie31 5y ago
Why do we call it kidnapping instead of extraordinary rendition?
- phendrenad2 5y ago
  Possibly because the world in general has settled on certain things being lawful, such as the freedom to criticize governments without repercussion, and if Iran wants to go against that trend they can't expect to get the western media red carpet treatment.
  - smcl 5y ago
    I think OP is saying that it’s “kidnap” when they do it but “extraordinary rendition” when we do it, regardless of what the accusation is. A helpful reminder that we correctly perceive this specific case as intolerable, and therefore we should not also allow our governments to do the same regardless of the euphemism they use
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - dogma1138 5y ago
      No, the OP suggesting there is a moral equivalence between both when there isn’t.
      - bawolff 5y ago
        Why not? Kidnapping people to face punishment without fair trial seems wrong no matter who does it.
        gknoy 5y ago
        While all (most? many?) extraordinary renditions are kidnappings, not all kidnappings are renditions. The difference is that when doing extraordinary renditions, we are delegating the incarcaration/torture/interrogation of the victim to _some other actor_ specifically so that we can technically not be performing horrible acts. That's what makes it a special kind of kidnapping. Kidnapping is only one of the ways we ingest people to treat in this manner, if I recall right. Presumably one could be arrested and then renditioned elsewhere -- the rendition is the part where we send someone elsewhere to be harmed in ways that our laws don't permit us to do ourselves.
reducesuffering 5y ago
Saudi's murder of Khashoggi in Turkey. Russia's poisoning of the Skripal's in England. Now, Iran's attempted kidnapping (probable murder) in the US. These repressive regimes sure are getting desperate...
- nickff 5y ago
  Or perhaps they have realized that there are few negative consequences to these actions?
  - ryanlol 5y ago
    Or perhaps you guys just need a history lesson, this is all very mild stuff as far as repressive regimes go. It’s not like as if they’re deliberately blowing up passenger aircraft https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_Am_Flight_103 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_Am_Flight_103
    - dogorman 5y ago
      That was in 1988, quite a lot has happened since then. In the aftermath of it, Gaddafi was cowed and sanctioned. Libya became less far provocative and accepted blame for the incident. By the mid-00s, it seemed like the demise or reform of oppressive regimes like Libya was inevitable. America took Libya, still under Gaddafi, off it's list of state sponsors of terror. Gaddafi's reputation never really recovered though, and that reputation probably played a role in his eventual death (nobody cared to save him.) It seemed as though other leaders of repressive regimes were laying low, hoping the same wouldn't happen to them. What we are seeing now seems like a return to form. Obviously all of this falls well short of the political violence seen in the 20th century. That's not an interesting observation. By that standard, literally everything after WWII has been a huge nothing-burger. That shouldn't stop us from observing worrying trends in the present.
      - relativ575 5y ago
        It remains to be seen if there has been an uptick in such activities. I'd argue that they have never stopped, but most of them are lower profile cases that the mainstream barely notice.
boomboomsubban 5y ago
So how did they get the search history and screenshot taken shown as evidence?
miracle2k 5y ago
It seems the headline is misleading in that it implies a kidnapping in the middle of Brooklyn was attempted, but the body of the article says they tried to "lure her to a third country".
- meepmorp 5y ago
  I don’t think it’s misleading at all. That’s just not reading carefully

89 points by ent101 5y ago

From her twitter: https://twitter.com/AlinejadMasih/status/1415115191084322816 https://twitter.com/AlinejadMasih/status/1415115191084322816

notsureaboutpg 5y ago
She's an "author"? Seems a bit crazy to me
sharken 5y ago
After reading that the Brooklyn author is indeed of Iranian origin, this story made a lot more sense. It seems that middle east regimes think they can control any of their citizens no matter where they live. I wonder if the US will impose sanctions on Iran, or if the US administration is not that eager to send that message.
- BBC-vs-neolibs 5y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_sanctions_against_Iran#Biden_presidency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_sanctions_agains...

bpodgursky 5y ago

This would have been quite the test for the Biden administration. I'm honestly curious what action they would have taken had it succeeded.

RyJones 5y ago
sent them another plane load of cash, probably
- bufferout 5y ago
  Please keep Facebook-style misinformation off here: https://www.factcheck.org/2019/03/obama-didnt-give-iran-150-billion-in-cash/ https://www.factcheck.org/2019/03/obama-didnt-give-iran-150-...
  - atatatat 5y ago
    Obama didn’t carry out any part of it on his own. The deal did lift some sanctions, which lifted a freeze on Iran’s assets that were held largely in foreign, not U.S., banks. And, to be clear, the money that was unfrozen belonged to Iran. It had only been made inaccessible by sanctions aimed at crippling the country’s nuclear program. Secondly, $150 billion is a high-end estimate of the total that was freed up after some sanctions were lifted. U.S. Treasury Department estimates put the number at about $50 billion in “usable liquid assets,” according to 2015 testimony from Adam Szubin, acting under secretary of treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence. The part that the meme gets right, though, is that the deal didn’t get congressional approval.
  - Thorondor 5y ago
    I agree that the comment you're responding to was off-topic, but calling it "Facebook-style misinformation" goes too far. It's well documented that the Obama administration sent multiple plane loads of cash to Iran in 2016. [0][1][2] [0] https://www.cnn.com/2016/08/03/politics/us-sends-plane-iran-400-million-cash/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2016/08/03/politics/us-sends-plane-iran-... [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-sent-cash-to-iran-as-americans-were-freed-1470181874 https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-sent-cash-to-iran-as-americ... [2] https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-sent-two-more-planeloads-of-cash-to-iran-after-initial-payment-1473208256 https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-sent-two-more-planeloads-of...
    - staunch 5y ago
      1. The money was Iran's to begin with and not U.S. money 2. The money was being returned to Iran based on an international agreement Anyone that fails to include these critical facts is (most likely) intentionally participating in the spread of misinformation/propaganda.
staunch 5y ago
This is a line in the sand that the U.S. government should not allow to be crossed going forward. All U.S. citizens anywhere, and anyone on U.S. soil, should be protected. This is one of the very good reasons to have such powerful intelligence agencies and military forces, to literally safeguard freedom. The U.S. is not a free country if its people have to live in fear of foreign dictators and theocrats. Had she been kidnapped or hurt, Biden would be right to respond with military force against everyone responsible.
- rjzzleep 5y ago
  Germany on the other hand has an official policy that if you have two passports they will not interfere with the other countries policies whatever they choose to do with their citizen. Canada has had a different stance on that, although arguably still weak, they at least consider their dual citizens abroad to be under their own jurisdiction.
  - bpodgursky 5y ago
    On one hand, the behavior would be different if _literally abducted from German soil_. On the other hand, the German government has almost no power to project force abroad so it might not matter much (aside from some sanctions or whatever).

redis_mlc 5y ago

This really happens. There was a famous case around 20 years ago where a young gf left a Middle East bf, moved to another country, and he sent an operative to kill her. Then there's KSA, where it's routine to send a jet for "wayward" family, and imprison them.

gorgoiler 5y ago

> The Iranian intelligence official [based in Iran] used private investigators to surveil, photograph and video record the author, the government said It is a shame that the NYT doesn’t include more information about these third party PIs — presumably licensed US investigators? If you help someone who is planning to commit a crime, that feels like you too have done something wrong. I wonder if the indictment also includes the PIs? The financial world has had KYC / Know Your Customer laws for a while now. Surely the same goes for PIs, with penalties for helping the bad guys? Edit: one conspirator was a Californian and has been charged with “providing financial services in support of the plot”, though it’s not clear if they were negligent in due-diligence or an outright Iranian government villain: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jul/13/iran-intelligence-officer-kidnap-plot-us-journalist https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jul/13/iran-intelli...

unishark 5y ago
A PI can be just a guy with a car and a camera though. You can't expect them to be able to handle the degree of regulations banks have. Your link says they were hired under false pretenses. There's more detail on the allegations here: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/iranian-intelligence-officials-indicted-kidnapping-conspiracy-charges https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/iranian-intelligence-official... > As alleged, Bahadorifar provided financial and other services from the United States to Iranian residents and entities, including to Khazein, since approximately 2015. Bahadorifar facilitated access to the U.S. financial system and institutions through the use of card accounts and offered to manage business interests in the United States on Khazein’s behalf. Among other things, Bahadorifar caused a payment to be made to a private investigator for surveillance of Victim-1 on Khazein’s behalf. While Bahadorifar is not charged with participating in the kidnapping conspiracy, she is alleged to have provided financial services that supported the plot and is charged with conspiring to violate sanctions against Iran, commit bank and wire fraud, and commit money laundering. Bahadorifar is also charged with structuring cash deposits totaling more than approximately $445,000. > Farahani, Khazein, Sadeghi and Noori are each charged with: (1) conspiring to kidnap, which carries a maximum sentence of life in prison; (2) conspiring to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) and sanctions against the government of Iran, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison; (3) conspiring to commit bank and wire fraud, which carries a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison; and (4) conspiring to launder money, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. Bahadorifar is charged with counts two, three and four, and is further charged with structuring, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison. A federal district court judge will determine any sentence after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.

hef19898 5y ago

Good that this stuff gets prosecuted. And now we can continue to do that with Turkey, Saudi and every other country not respecting nations sovereignty in doing the same thing with their dissidents abroad.

cdstyh 5y ago
This comment is hilarious. It highlights Americans selective view of history and ignorance of what their country regularly does.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  > This comment is hilarious. It highlights Americans selective view of history and ignorance of what their country regularly does. Or the GP commenter thought it went without saying that prosecuting other countries intelligence services for this stuff will happen as a prerequisite to prosecuting our own intelligence services for this stuff.
- hef19898 5y ago
  First time anyone saw me as an American, not sure what to make of it. Now that you mentioned it, the world should never have let the US get away with the war on terror and everything that came with it. But hey, that's the world we live in now, one of our own making.

helaoban 5y ago

Just the casus belli for a war with Iran we were looking for! "Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!"

aaron695 5y ago

USA does this all the time. They do it to criminals, but if Iran considers this author a criminal then the kidnap part is not really an issue - This was securities and mail fraud - "alleging that he had been illegally abducted by agents of the United States government. Reed claimed that he had been living in Bimini in the Bahamas, engaging in real estate transactions, when CIA agents enticed him by deceitful means upon a private airplane destined not for Nassau, as he had been told, but for Fort Lauderdale, Florida. According to Reed, the agents made him lie on the floor of the small plane for thirty minutes, holding a cocked gun to his head and threatening to blow his brains out." https://casetext.com/case/united-states-v-reed-31 https://casetext.com/case/united-states-v-reed-31

dmos62 5y ago
I think it's important to realise that it's not only the US-hostile regimes that do this.
- 0xdeadb00f 5y ago
  Not only US-hostile regimes, but the US regime itself!
relativ575 5y ago
> USA does this all the time. They do it to criminals, but if Iran considers this author a criminal then the kidnap part is not really an issue - It's criminal because it targeted an American citizen, on American soil. Why isn't that so hard to get? It wouldn't be criminal if it happened in Teheran, since that would be under a different sovereignty.
- trasz 5y ago
  It's not hard to get, it's just that it's rather silly - should North Korea have the right to kidnap someone allegedly targeting NK citizens? The only reason it works is because the US is the bully. Same reason american war criminals and terrorists usually don't get prosecuted.

anomie31 5y ago

Why do we call it kidnapping instead of extraordinary rendition?

phendrenad2 5y ago
Possibly because the world in general has settled on certain things being lawful, such as the freedom to criticize governments without repercussion, and if Iran wants to go against that trend they can't expect to get the western media red carpet treatment.
- smcl 5y ago
  I think OP is saying that it’s “kidnap” when they do it but “extraordinary rendition” when we do it, regardless of what the accusation is. A helpful reminder that we correctly perceive this specific case as intolerable, and therefore we should not also allow our governments to do the same regardless of the euphemism they use
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - dogma1138 5y ago
    No, the OP suggesting there is a moral equivalence between both when there isn’t.
    - bawolff 5y ago
      Why not? Kidnapping people to face punishment without fair trial seems wrong no matter who does it.
      - gknoy 5y ago
        While all (most? many?) extraordinary renditions are kidnappings, not all kidnappings are renditions. The difference is that when doing extraordinary renditions, we are delegating the incarcaration/torture/interrogation of the victim to _some other actor_ specifically so that we can technically not be performing horrible acts. That's what makes it a special kind of kidnapping. Kidnapping is only one of the ways we ingest people to treat in this manner, if I recall right. Presumably one could be arrested and then renditioned elsewhere -- the rendition is the part where we send someone elsewhere to be harmed in ways that our laws don't permit us to do ourselves.

reducesuffering 5y ago

Saudi's murder of Khashoggi in Turkey. Russia's poisoning of the Skripal's in England. Now, Iran's attempted kidnapping (probable murder) in the US. These repressive regimes sure are getting desperate...

nickff 5y ago
Or perhaps they have realized that there are few negative consequences to these actions?
- ryanlol 5y ago
  Or perhaps you guys just need a history lesson, this is all very mild stuff as far as repressive regimes go. It’s not like as if they’re deliberately blowing up passenger aircraft https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_Am_Flight_103 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_Am_Flight_103
  - dogorman 5y ago
    That was in 1988, quite a lot has happened since then. In the aftermath of it, Gaddafi was cowed and sanctioned. Libya became less far provocative and accepted blame for the incident. By the mid-00s, it seemed like the demise or reform of oppressive regimes like Libya was inevitable. America took Libya, still under Gaddafi, off it's list of state sponsors of terror. Gaddafi's reputation never really recovered though, and that reputation probably played a role in his eventual death (nobody cared to save him.) It seemed as though other leaders of repressive regimes were laying low, hoping the same wouldn't happen to them. What we are seeing now seems like a return to form. Obviously all of this falls well short of the political violence seen in the 20th century. That's not an interesting observation. By that standard, literally everything after WWII has been a huge nothing-burger. That shouldn't stop us from observing worrying trends in the present.
    - relativ575 5y ago
      It remains to be seen if there has been an uptick in such activities. I'd argue that they have never stopped, but most of them are lower profile cases that the mainstream barely notice.

boomboomsubban 5y ago

So how did they get the search history and screenshot taken shown as evidence?

miracle2k 5y ago

It seems the headline is misleading in that it implies a kidnapping in the middle of Brooklyn was attempted, but the body of the article says they tried to "lure her to a third country".

meepmorp 5y ago
I don’t think it’s misleading at all. That’s just not reading carefully