By Kanishka Singh
WASHINGTON, March 6 (Reuters) – A Pakistani man was convicted on Friday of planning to kill President Donald Trump and other prominent U.S. politicians two years ago at the behest of Iran, the Department of Justice said.
Asif Merchant was accused of trying to recruit people in the U.S. in a plan targeting Trump and others in retaliation for Washington’s killing of Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani in 2020, when Trump was in his first term.
Targets in the 2024 plot also included then-President Joe Biden and Nikki Haley, who ran against Trump that year for the Republican presidential nomination, federal prosecutors said.
Merchant was convicted of “murder for hire and attempting to commit an act of terrorism transcending national boundaries,” directed by the Iranian authorities, the DOJ said in a statement.
The trial in the New York City borough of Brooklyn started last week, days before Trump ordered an assault on Iran, carried out with Israel, that has expanded into the region’s biggest war in years.
Merchant admitted to joining the plot with Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps but testified he did so unwillingly, to protect his family in Tehran.
Merchant said he was never ordered to kill a specific person but that his Iranian handler named three people in the course of conversations in the Iranian capital.
Law enforcement thwarted the plan before any attack occurred. A person Merchant contacted in April 2024 to help with the plot reported his activities and became a confidential informant, the DOJ said. Merchant was arrested and pleaded not guilty that year.
The Revolutionary Guards have a central role in Iran, with a combination of military and economic power and an intelligence network. Tehran has denied accusations that it targeted Trump or other U.S. officials.
U.S. and Israeli attacks since Saturday have killed at least 1,332 Iranian civilians and wounded thousands, according to Iran’s U.N. ambassador. Many top Iranian leaders, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, have been killed.
The U.S. military has said six of its service members were killed in a strike on a facility in Kuwait, while Israeli tallies show at least 10 civilians have been killed across Israel.
(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by William Mallard)
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