A lawyer for one of the two men who are accused of being hired to kill the Iranian dissident Masih Alinejad in New York City, tried to discredit the most important witness of the prosecutor on Thursday by portraying him on the jury as a reinforced liar. But can it break the government’s case?
“Have you told Omarov that you moved in?” Lawyer Elena asked the witness, Khalid Mehdiyev, a self-proclaimed gangster in an Eastern European criminal organization. She referred to her client Polad Omarov and asked the witness if he told the Lord Omarov that he moved to the house of his target, the Iranian-American journalist and author Masih Alinejad.
“Yes, Miss,” the 27-year-old witness replied.
“But you never lived there?” Mrs Fast asked and Mr. Mehdiyev confirmed that he never lived in Mrs. Alinejad’s house.
Mrs Fast defends Mr Omarov, 40, against accusations of federal prosecutors, who accuses him of being hired by people with ties with the Iranian government to kill Mrs. Alinejad, a fierce critic of the Iranian regime, in her house in Brooklyn. A second defendant, who also stands for the same charges, is the 54-year-old Rafat Amirov. Both men are inhabitants of Azerbaijan, a country that borders Iran and Russia. Federal public prosecutors are planning to prove that Mr Omarov and Mr. Amirov, who were abroad and are not American citizens, has contracted Mr Mehdiyyv, who lived in the Bronx, to carry out the real murder.
On Thursday, Mr Mehdiyev was examined by the defense lawyers for both defendants in the federal court building in Lower Manhattan, where the trial began on Monday.
According to his own testimony, Mr. Mehdiyev came to the United States on a tourist visa and later requested a political asylum, in which he falsely stated that he was being prosecuted in his home country of Azerbaijan. He proceeded to lead a life of organized crime, which deals with robberies, extortion, abductions, arson, attempted fraud and contract murders, he told the jury.
Mr. Mehdiye was arrested by the police in July 2022, near Mrs. Alinejad’s house, where he had parked outside for days. He later claimed that he had noticed two undercover police cars in the area and decided to drive away. When he flowed through a stopboard, detectives for the New York police pulled him over. The officers discovered that he was driving with a suspended driver’s license and searched through his car. They obtained a suitcase with a charged AK-47 and about 66 rounds ammunition, as well as a ski mask and rubber gloves.
On Wednesday, Mr. Mehdiyev testified that he was there “to kill the journalist”.
The criminal complaint about his arrest in July 2022 stated that Mr Mehdiyev had driven to Mrs. Alinejad’s house in a gray Subaru Forester SUV with Illinois plates and stayed in the area for hours. He ordered food to be delivered to the car and he walked to the house and tried to look in the windows, even to open the front door.
After his arrest, he told officers that he wanted to ask Mrs. Alinejad if she would rent him a room, but had changed ideas and decided not to ask.
Mr. Mehdiyev has found guilty guilty of countless federal charges in both southern and eastern York, and collaborates with the government in Hope on a lower punishment.
However, the two defendants who are currently being tried have not guilty of the charges, including murder-for-rent, conspiracy to commit murder-for-rent, conspiracy of money and possession of a firearm. Both men were arrested abroad in January 2023 and brought to New York to be tried. Other defendants, who are also mentioned in the indictment, have not yet been arrested and stay on the loose, probably abroad.
The defense tried to convince the jury – as is often the case in criminal processes in which a witness bears witnessed as part of a plea – that Mr Mehdiyev is lying about their clients to get a lighter punishment. Mrs. Fast spent almost the whole day asking Mr. Mehdiyev, as a result of which he exposed his extensive Rapblad from criminal activities to the jury, and his countless lies to her client and countless other people with whom he was known.
According to Mr. Mehdiyev’s testimony, Mr Omarov said that the two $ 160,000 would split for the murder track on Mrs. Alinejad. But Mr Mehdiyev, it turned out, had lied to Mr Omarov about what he did at her home. For example, he told Mr Omarov that he had both sides of the house, the front and the back garden, ‘blocked’, which means that there was someone who was ready to shoot the journalist as soon as she came out.
“But you didn’t block the house from both sides?” Asked Mrs. Fast.
“No, Miss,” the witness replied calmly.
She told the jury that Mr Mehdiyev also said that he would take a girl to the house and let her beat on the door and tell Mrs. Alinejad that she liked the flowers in her front garden to lure the goal out, so that Mr Mehdiyev could shoot her.
“But the girl didn’t come?” Mrs. Fast went on.
“No, Miss,” said the witness.
Indeed, Mr Mehdiyev also lied against other people, as a man who called Levent, whose house he actually lived, and who was one of the owners of Peppinos Pizza in the Bronx, where Mr Mehdiyev worked for a short period.
“You lived with him,” the defender told the jury, “he didn’t take you renting … You worked in his restaurant … You went on vacation with him … To Las Vegas, to California, to Miami … and while you were Levent in California, you had the business partner of Levent Robbed.” Mrs. Fast described in detail how Mr. Mehdiyev a robbery of Levent’s business partner at the Pizzeria in Brooklyn orchestrated. And later, while he was in prison, he tried to squeeze money from Levent by threatening to tell the government that his wife was involved in the sexual salon and that Levent had earned millions with bank fraud.
“You tried to extort money from Levent for not disclosing government information about him,” Mrs. Fast printed.
“Yes, Miss.” Said the witness.
Mrs Fast’s colleague, lawyer Michael Perkins, had described Mr Mehdiyev in his opening statement as “a witness you would not buy a used car.”
“Why did you tell the Lord Omarov that your mother was dead?” Mrs Fast asked later.
“I had many enemies,” Mr. Mehdiyev explained.
“You didn’t want someone to hurt your family, is that right?” Mrs. Fast has been added.
“Yes, Miss,” said the gangster.
The lawyer made the jury aware that Mr Mehdiyev had raised money from people with whom he was known for the fictional funeral of his mother, and even asked for money for her cancer treatment.
“Does your mother have cancer?” Asked Mrs. Fast.
“No,” the witness replied calmly.
Mrs. Fast told the jury that the government had taken the mother, father and brother of Mr Mehdiyyev as part of his pleidation agreement, and that prosecutors could make a so-called 5K motion to the court, so that the judge could give Mr Mehdiyev lower than the required minimum. He is currently confronted with at least fifteen years in prison.
‘Fifteen years old is half of your life? The lawyer noticed.
“God knows how long I will live,” thought Mr.Mehdiyev.
“Do you want to live like a crafted animal for the rest of your life?” Asked Mrs. Fast.
“No, Miss,” he said.
But when assistant -Marican lawyer Jacob Gut willingly examined his witness on Redirect, he asked if Mr Mehdiyev had outlined all his crimes with the government that he confirmed.
“And what was the most important thing that you have to do for the cooperation agreement?” Mr. Gut voluntarily asked.
“Tell the truth or nothing,” Mr. Mehdiyev replied.
But how relevant is the long history of Mr. Mehdiyev van Liegen? Covering about the case is a much more serious question with geopolitical consequences: did the Iranian government indeed order the murder of an American citizen to take place on American soil? That question has yet to be tackled during the process. The Iranian government has denied any involvement in a conspiracy to take the life of Mrs. Alinejad.
The process continues on Friday. Mrs. Alinejad is expected to testify, possibly as soon as next week.
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