US accuses Iranian man and two Canadians of plotting to kill refugees

An Iranian man accused of being the center of a network that targets dissidents has been accused of hiring two Canadians, including a member of the Hells Angels, to kill two Iranian refugees living in Maryland, it has emerged from the indictments released Monday.

The man, Naji Sharifi Zindashti, 49, is accused of being a drug trafficker and murderer in Iran. In December, a federal grand jury in Minnesota accused him of orchestrating a plot to kill an unknown Iranian defector and another person in late 2020 and early 2021 using an encrypted messaging app to recruit assassins.

Mr. Zindashti contacted Damion Ryan, 43, who in turn engaged Adam R. Pearson, 29, according to court documents. Prosecutors identified Mr. Pearson as a “full member of the outlaw Hells Angels Motorcycle Club” who was living illegally in Minnesota.

Both men are being held in Canadian prisons on unrelated charges. In a chilling exchange described in one of the indictments, Mr. Pearson indicated that he intended to shoot one of his targets in the head to send a message on behalf of his Iranian handler.

“We need to remove his head from his torso,” Mr Pearson said in an intercepted communication on the encrypted platform Sky ECC.

For reasons unknown, the hits were never carried out.

The men – who claimed to have organized a four-man team, including a driver – agreed to a $350,000 payment in January 2021. Mr. Zindashti, identified by the Treasury Department as a drug trafficker working on behalf of Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security, sent them photos of the targets, a man and a woman, along with maps.

He appears to have paid them only $20,000 for travel expenses, prosecutors said.

The charges stem from a years-long investigation by the FBI, the Department of Justice and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

Law enforcement officials said the investigation was continuing and did not rule out the possibility that others could be charged.

“Let today's indictment send a clear message to those in Iran who plot assassinations on American soil and to the criminal actors who collaborate with them: the Department of Justice will pursue you for as long as it takes,” said Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the ministry's national security division said in a statement.

It is not the first time that a member of the Hells Angels has been linked to Iran. In 2023, a court in Dusseldorf, Germany, convicted a man of attempting to set fire to a synagogue after a member of the gang who had worked with officials in Tehran asked him to do so. German prosecutors said.

The revelation of the indictment comes at a time of heightened tensions between the United States and Iran, one day after the deaths of three American soldiers in an attack by an Iranian-backed militia on a base in Jordan. President Biden has promised to take revenge.

The Justice Department has warned that several foreign powers, including Iran, Russia and China, have become increasingly brazen in their attacks on dissidents and refugees living in the United States.

In July, federal prosecutors in Brooklyn charged three men in a plot hatched in Iran to kill Masih Alinejad, an American human rights activist who has criticized the country's oppression of women.

In November, a federal grand jury in New York indicted an Indian man for plotting to kill a Sikh dissident living in New York. Prosecutors said Nikhil Gupta, 52, worked with an unknown Indian government official to recruit a hitman, according to the allegations. Mr. Gupta was captured in Prague and is being extradited to the United States by Czech authorities.

The three defendants accused of working for Iran are all accused of conspiring to commit two murders for hire. Mr. Pearson is also charged with one count of possession of a firearm by a fugitive from justice and one count of possession of a firearm by an alien unlawfully in the United States.

After the indictment was made public, the Treasury and British officials announced that this was the case the imposition of sanctions against Mr. Zindashti and associates who “committed numerous acts of transnational repression, including assassinations and kidnappings.”

Treasury officials said Mr. Zindashti was behind the 2020 kidnapping of a dissident who was smuggled back to Iran, summarily tried and executed. They also accused Mr Zindashti and his men of killing a former Iranian cybersecurity official in 2019 who had challenged the country's leadership. They also said Mr Zindashti was responsible for the 2017 killing of Saeed Karimian, the owner of Gem TV, a network of television channels critical of Tehran.

It was not immediately clear who is representing Mr. Ryan or Mr. Pearson in the case.

Iran's representative to the United Nations did not immediately return a request for comment.