A key witness took the stand on Tuesday in the trial of two alleged hitmen accused of trying to kill Iranian dissident Masih Alinejad in New York City, at the behest of Iran. The witness, Khalid Mehdiyev, who is alleged to have been part of the failed assassination plot, is cooperating with prosecutors. But it remains to be seen if his testimony is enough to prove their case. 

“I was there trying to kill the journalist,” Mr. Mehdiyev testified on Tuesday inside a Manhattan federal courtroom. The target he was referring to is Masih Alinejad, an Iran-born American, who is a prominent journalist and fierce critic of Iran’s government. From the stand, Mr. Mehdiyev described the day law enforcement arrested him near Ms. Alinejad’s home in Brooklyn in July 2022 and found a loaded machine gun in his car. 

The New York Police Department detective, Daniel Smith, who made the arrest, had testified about the arrest in the morning. Federal prosecutors showed the jury the AK-47-style assault rifle, also known as a Kalashnikov, that the detective found in Mehdiyev’s vehicle. 

Mr. Mehdiyev, 27, is originally from Azerbaijan, a country that borders Iran and Russia. He testified that he has been living in the United States since 2017.   

 “I commit murder, kidnappings, extortion and other things,” Mr. Mehdiyev told Assistant U.S. Attorney Jacob Gutwillig. And when asked if he was a member of a criminal organization, he confirmed. “Yes, the Russian mob.” 

The self-described mobster is a key witness against the trial’s two defendants who are allegedly members of the same crime organization, Rafat Amirov and Polad Omarov, who are also natives of Azerbaijan. They are accused of having been hired by people with ties to the Iranian government to assassinate Ms. Alinejad. Prosecutors intend to prove that the two defendants contracted Mr. Mehdiyev to do the dirty work and actually carry out the slaying. 

In his opening statement on Tuesday, Mr. Gutwillig told the jury that the defendants “were hired by the government of Iran to assassinate an American citizen on United States soil.” Mr. Gutwillig said the men plotted “to gun her down at home, right here in New York City.”

Ms. Alinejad is an out-spoken critic of the Iranian regime. She has spent many years exposing human rights abuses, and fled Iran, where she was born and raised, in 2009. She became an American citizen in 2019. Today she resides in Brooklyn. 

“She shined a light on the government of Iran’s oppression of women, and that enraged the regime,” Mr. Gutwillig said. The prosecution alleges that  Iranian officials hired the two defendants to assassinate her. 

But defense attorney Michael W. Martin disagreed. He told jurors that his client, Mr. Amirov “was dragged into this case,” that “others plotted against him,” and that the evidence would fail to show “that he is part of this conspiracy.”  

“There is no eye witness… There is no audio, no video of Mr. Amirov committing or confessing to any crime,” Mr. Martin said in his opening statement, and shifted the attention to Mr. Mehdiyev. “One person was definitely involved, Mehdiyev… He was caught with the assault rifle and the ski mask… The evidence against him is overwhelming.” 

Mr. Martin argued that the man, who was arrested near Ms. Alinejad’s Brooklyn home, was trying to lower his sentence by cooperating with prosecutors and testifying on their behalf. “That’s how life works. If you want something of value you have to give something of value.” 

The Russian mobster, Mr. Mehdiyev, testified later that he pleaded guilty to several federal charges in Manhattan and in Brooklyn, including attempted murder, conspiracy, possession of a firearm and bank fraud, and that he faced a minimum of fifteen years and a maximum of life in prison. He is currently in custody and wore dark green inmate clothing on the witness stand.      

The defense attorney said “evidence will show that Mr. Amirov knows the people who committed the crime,” but he argued that his client “is not on trial for his lifestyle or his values.”     

The defense attorney for the second defendant, Michael Perkins, echoed a similar sentiment. In his opening statement, which lasted no more than five or six minutes, he said evidence would show that his client, Mr. Omarov, was involved in criminal acts, but would not show he was “involved in attempting to kill Alinejad.” 

“Mr. Omarov had no intent, no agreement for anyone to kill Ms. Alinejad,” Mr. Perkins said. Then the attorney added another element to his defense, telling the jury, “Mr. Omarov is a scam artist,” who “cheated the Iranian government out of money.” It appears the defense team will try to show that Mr. Omarov was in fact not working for the Iranians but stealing from them.   

As prosecutors began to call their first witnesses, the difficulty of proving their conspiracy quickly became evident. Two corrections officers, who work at Metropolitan Detention Center, Brooklyn, where the defendants are being held, testified that they obtained cell phones from Mr. Amirov and Mr. Omarov. Cell phones are considered contraband in jails and in prisons, and are mostly forbidden due to security concerns. Prosecutors did not yet specify what the cellphones would prove, but one would assume that they contained incriminating communications.  

Under Mr. Perkins’ cross-examination, one of the officers, Claudio Ruiz, admitted he found the phone in Mr. Omarov’s bed, but had not actually witnessed him using the phone, and had no knowledge if another inmate may have also used the phone before he retrieved it.      

The jury was shown numerous photographs of the defendants’ mob life, which resembled a “Jason Bourne” film. During the testimony of FBI agent Peter Baldwin, who was present when Mr. Omariv was arrested in the Czech Republic last year, jurors saw pictures of the various passports Mr. Omarov had used to hide his identity and travel. The FBI retrieved a Turkish passport, a Croatian passport, a Bulgarian passport and a Ukrainian passport, each using different names.  

The testimony of Mr. Mehdiyev, who took the stand in the afternoon, corroborated that the three men were all involved in criminal activities. 

But how these activities connect to the plot to assassinate Ms. Alinejad in Brooklyn, remains to be proven.     

Mr. Mehdiyev will continue his testimony on Wednesday morning.