Iranian operative tasked with assassination of Trump

A fugitive Iranian government operative is accused of hiring a pair of New Yorkers he met in prison to carry out an assassination plot against a critic of the regime, and allegedly admitted to FBI agents that he had also been tasked with finding a hit squad to kill president-elect Donald Trump.

- JUSTIN ROHRLICH

Farhad Shakeri, 51, claimed he was asked in September by regime officials to “put aside his other efforts... and focus on surveilling, and, ultimately, assassinating, the former president of the United States, Donald J Trump,” according to a criminal complaint unsealed yesterday in Manhattan federal court.

Shakeri countered that this would cost a “huge” amount of money, to which his regime contact replied, “[W]e have already spent a lot of money .. . [s]o the money’s not an issue.” Shakeri said he was given a deadline of mid-October.

The complaint also reveals that, in a separate assassination plot, Shakeri was told by his Iranian government contacts to locate a hitman capable of surveilling, then murdering, an unnamed journalist in the US. It says Shakeri, an Afghani national and former New York resident, offered $100,000 to two men, Carlisle “Pop” Rivera, 49, and Jonathan Loadholt, 36, while serving a 14-year sentence for robbery.

Rivera and Loadholt were arrested on Thursday in Brooklyn and Staten Island, and remain detained pending trial on charges of murder-for-hire, conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire, and money laundering conspiracy. Shakeri, who is believed to be in Iran and out of US law enforcement’s reach, faces the same charges as Rivera and Loadholt, plus conspiring to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organisation and conspiracy to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and sanctions against the government of Iran.