NEW YORK: A US judge jailed two men for 25 years each Wednesday for a plot allegedly hatched by Tehran to kill Iranian-American journalist Masih Alinejad, her team confirmed to AFP.
Rafat Amirov and Polad Omarov, both members of an eastern European criminal gang, orchestrated a failed plot to assassinate campaigning reporter Alinejad.
“They wanted to see me dead on my porch in Brooklyn and thanks to the law enforcement agencies, I am alive and Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader (of Iran), is humiliated,” Alinejad said outside a Manhattan courthouse following the sentencing, brandishing a sunflower.
“I was nervous but at the same time very empowered to speak the truth,” she added before dancing and singing in Farsi.
Amirov and Omarov were both jailed for 25 years, a spokesman for Alinejad said following the hearing, after prosecutors had sought 55-year terms for each, according to court filings.
