By Colin Moynihan

The New York Times

For nearly a decade, people with ties to Iran’s government have been accused of plotting to kidnap or murder Masih Alinejad, a journalist and dissident who left the country in 2009 and an impassioned critic of its leaders.

On Thursday, a jury in Manhattan returned guilty verdicts in the first criminal case stemming from those attempts to go to trial.

Two accused members of the Russian mob, who prosecutors said had plotted to kill Ms. Alinejad at the behest of a network in Iran that included a brigadier general in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, were found guilty in Federal District Court of five offenses including murder for hire, attempted murder in aid of racketeering and conspiracy to launder money.

Both defendants, Rafat Amirov and Polad Omarov, stood quietly as the jury’s foreman answered “guilty” in response to Judge Colleen McMahon’s questions about each of the counts. They were then led from the courtroom.

“I am relieved that after nearly three years, the men who plotted to kill me have been found guilty,” Ms. Alinejad said in a statement. “But make no mistake, the real masterminds of this crime are still in power in Iran.”

Matthew Podolsky, the acting United States attorney in Manhattan, issued a statement, too, saying: “If you target U.S. citizens, we will find you, no matter where you are, and bring you to justice.”

Key evidence against the defendants came from a mob member who was arrested in 2022 with an AK-47-style assault rifle after the authorities said he had stepped onto Ms. Alinejad’s porch in Brooklyn and tried to enter her home.

That man, Khalid Mehdiyev, said on the stand that Mr. Omarov had sent him to kill Ms. Alinejad. He also testified that Mr. Amirov later spoke with him while they were both in federal custody and admitted that he, too, had been part of the plot.

The conviction of Mr. Amirov and Mr. Omarov brought some measure of resolution to what U.S. officials have described as an unrelenting retaliation effort against an Iranian dissident who had agitated for women’s rights from abroad.

Prosecutors said that in 2018 Iranian officials tried unsuccessfully to bribe Ms. Alinejad’s relatives in Iran to lure her to Turkey so she could be kidnapped. Another attempted kidnapping a few years later, planned for New York City, also failed.

“The Iranian regime spent years attempting to harass, smear, intimidate and even kidnap Ms. Alinejad,” a prosecutor, Michael Lockard, told jurors during his summation on Wednesday. “When those efforts failed, the government of Iran put a $500,000 bounty on her head, blood money that Mr. Amirov and Mr. Omarov were all too eager to claim.”

In addition to Mr. Amirov and Mr. Omarov, several other men were indicted in the 2022 plot but have not been taken into U.S. custody. Among them are an accused Russian mob member named Zialat Mamedov and four Iranian men, including the Revolutionary Guards general, Ruhollah Bazghandi.

Prosecutors have said that Mr. Bazghandi’s network initiated the plot against Ms. Alinejad. A network member maintained contact with Mr. Amirov, a citizen of Azerbaijan and Russia who was living in Iran, prosecutors said. They added that Mr. Amirov turned to Mr. Omarov, a Georgian living in Eastern Europe, to carry out the plot.

Mr. Mehdiyev, an Azerbaijani man then living in Yonkers, N.Y., testified that Mr. Omarov called him saying that people he knew were willing to pay $160,000 for Ms. Alinejad’s murder.

Within days, Mr. Mehdiyev had bought the assault rifle and was staking out Ms. Alinejad’s home. At one point, according to evidence, Mr. Omarov told Mr. Mehdiyev to make sure any attack on Ms. Alinejad was fatal, writing: “Put one more bullet on journalist head.”

Ms. Alinejad appeared as a witness, saying that she had glimpsed a man in the summer of 2022, the time when he was tracking her, standing in her front garden and “staring into my eyes.”

Mr. Mehdiyev testified that he had seen Ms. Alinejad once as he strolled past her home. He said that by the time he returned to his vehicle for the rifle she had vanished.

During their summations, lawyers for Mr. Amirov and Mr. Omarov denounced Mr. Mehdiyev’s account as fantastical, saying he was trying to save himself by falsely implicating others.

“You will struggle to find anyone more untrustworthy than Mr. Mehdiyev, as so many of his friends discovered firsthand,” Mr. Amirov’s lawyer, Michael W. Martin, told jurors >>>