A journalist and activist from Iran who prosecutors stated was the goal of an assassination plot testified Tuesday that Tehran’s marketing campaign to silence her left her feeling damaged, however that she responded to each risk by planting a flower at her house in New York.
“That’s why I have a beautiful, massive garden … because I face a lot of curses and threats,” Masih Alinejad informed the jury.
The dissident author testified for greater than two hours on the trial of two males charged with making an attempt to kidnap and kill her in 2022. U.S. prosecutors say the homicide plot was orchestrated from Iran to cease Alinejad from talking out about human rights abuses in her house nation.
“We don’t have free media in Iran,” she stated.
She left Iran in 2009 following the nation’s disputed 2009 presidential election and moved to america, the place she launched on-line campaigns to encourage ladies in Iran to pose for photos and movies exhibiting their hair, in defiance of a non secular rule requiring a head scarf.
In Iran, Alinejad stated, a cleric had as soon as informed her “I’m going to punch on your face if you don’t cover your hair proper.” On the stand, Alinejad appeared with curly, black hair styled in massive curls.
Alinejad’s testimony got here per week after a former member of the Russian mob testified that he took pictures and movies outdoors her Brooklyn house after he was employed to assassinate her. Earlier than he might, he was stopped by police for operating a cease signal. He was arrested after a loaded AK-47 assault rifle was present in his backseat.
An creator and contributor to Voice of America, Alinejad turned a U.S. citizen in October 2019. She has traveled the world chatting with ladies and inspiring others to hitch her motion for freedom of expression by ladies, significantly these in Iran.
She stated authorities in Iran have persistently tried to derail her messages by calling her a prostitute, a CIA agent and even “an agent” of President Donald Trump.
In 2022, shortly earlier than the FBI moved her out of her house after the assassination plot was found, she stated the threats and insults had turn into so extreme that she felt “broken a little bit.”
It was then, she testified, that she started planting a flower for each insult and risk made in opposition to her.
Her testimony was offered on the trial of Rafat Amirov and Polad Omarov, natives of Azerbaijan, which shares a border and cultural ties with Iran. The boys have pleaded not responsible to a number of fees, together with murder-for-hire.
Protection attorneys for Amirov and Omarov have informed jurors that prosecutors’ proof was merely circumstantial and there is not sufficient proof for a conviction.
A choose informed jurors Monday that they might begin deliberating by the top of this week.
