A US court will hold a sentencing hearing next week for two men convicted over an alleged Tehran-backed plot to kill Iranian dissident and journalist Masih Alinejad, she said on X on Thursday.
Alinejad said the hearing would take place in Manhattan on Wednesday and that she planned to appear in person.
She said she would come “face-to-face with the two Russian hitmen sent by Iran’s regime,” adding that she has survived one kidnapping and two assassination plots on US soil.
“I lost my Brooklyn home, my garden, my peace, but not my voice,” she wrote. “Transnational repression is dictatorship without borders. It must end.”
In March, a US jury found Rafat Amirov and Polad Omarov guilty on all charges related to a plot to assassinate Alinejad.
The charges against them included murder for hire, firearms possession and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
Prosecutors said the convicted men, Rafat Amirov and Polad Omarov, were members of the Russian mob. Their lawyers argued that they were innocent and evidence presented at trial was flawed.
Khalid Mehdiyev, a member of the Thieves in Law gang, said he received orders from the two to kill the journalist who uses her platform to expose the Islamic Republic’s repression.
As a government witness, who has made a deal with prosecutors, Mehdiyev pleaded guilty to attempted murder and gun charges, but Omarav and Amirov stood trial.
Alinejad, who has long criticized Iran’s compulsory hijab laws and its treatment of women, said she will speak at the sentencing not just for herself, but "for every woman who refuses to be afraid.”
