Closing arguments were held at the trial of two men, accused of having been hired by people tied to the Iranian government to murder the Iranian-American journalist and human rights activist, Masih Alinejad, at her home in New York City. Defense attorneys did not dispute that the Iranians were allegedly targeting the journalist, but fiercely disagreed that their clients were involved in the plot. One defense lawyer even acted out the testimony of a key witness, like a scene from a movie, to convince the jury that the murder-conspiracy is fabricated fiction.   

“The government of Iran put a $500,000 bounty on her head,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Lockard told the jury on Thursday at a federal courthouse in Lower Manhattan. He was speaking about Ms. Alinejad, who was born and raised in Iran, but fled Iran for America in 2009 after the country’s disputed presidential election. She became an American citizen in 2019. 

“Blood money that Rafat Amirov and Polad Omarov were all too eager to collect,” Mr. Lockard said, referring to the defendants in the courtroom, who are accused of having plotted to kill her in the summer of 2022.  

“They wanted Masih Alinejad dead, not in the witness box,” Mr. Lockard emphasized. Ms. Alinejad testified on Wednesday, as the Sun reported, telling the jury how her vocal criticism of Iran’s strict hijab law, that mandates women to cover their hair in public, and her criticism of the regime’s human rights abuses, has angered the Iranian leadership. The jury heard a speech by Iran’s Supreme leader himself, Ali Hosseini Khamenei, in which he referred to Ms. Alinejad as “an American political agent.”     

While Iranian officials have denied any involvement in the case, defense attorney Michael Martin, who represents Mr. Amirov, did not argue against prosecutors’ contention that the regime was after Ms. Alinejad. “There is no dispute that the Iranian government is targeting Masih Alinejad,” he said in his closing statement. Neither his team, nor the defense attorneys for Mr. Omarov, had cross-examined Ms.Alinejad. On the contrary, Mr. Martin described her testimony as “courageous.” But he quickly pointed out that there is a “stark difference” between Iran and the United States, and “that is the right” to the presumption of innocence. He called it “one of the most robust constitutional rights we have” and one of the ways “how we distinguish ourselves from Iran.” In other words, though Iran may have been targeting Ms. Alinejad, Mr. Martin said his client had nothing to do with it.      

The prosecution painted a different picture.

“Rafat Amirov and Polad Omarov are high level members of the Azerbaijani faction of the Russian mob,” Mr. Lockard said, referring to the two Azerbaijani men sitting at the defense table. Mr. Amirov, 46, who was dressed in a gray suit, and Mr. Omarov, 40, who wore a beige sweater, were arrested overseas and extradited to New York last year to face a five-count indictment including charges of murder-for-hire, firearm use in relation to attempted murder, and money laundering. They have both pleaded not guilty.        

“Rafat Amirov carried three phones when he was arrested … He traveled with a fake passport under a fake name,” Mr. Lockard told the jury, and reminded them of his status in the crime organization, saying that, “Rafat Amirov is a vor.” The Russian word ‘vor means thief. Under Stalin, the forced labor camps were overflowing with political prisoners and criminals, many of whom joined a growing criminal organization known as the vory v zakone, or “thieves in law.” 

A man who has vor status is considered a leader, like a crime boss, equal to a Don in the Italian mafia. A vor v zakone is a thief in a position of the law, a thief with authority.  

“Rafat was crowned under Guli, but Guli was gone,” Mr. Lockard explained, referring to Nadir Salifov, a “notorious gangster and convicted criminal believed to be one of the richest of the criminal fraternity,” according to his  Wikipedia page. Guli was shot by one of his bodyguards in August of 2020. 

“After Guli’s death there was a power vacuum … People were grasping for the Guli throne,” Mr. Lockard said, arguing that the assassination job for the Iranians would “advance” Mr. Amirov’s position in the “Guli clan.” 

The prosecutor was laying out the motives. The other defendant, Mr. Omarov, was in a situation he described as “precarious.” Guli, both sides agreed, was Mr. Omarov’s direct cousin. “He (Mr. Omarov) claimed he had been crowned a vor but his status was disputed.”  

A recorded and translated conversation the jury had heard the day before confirmed this. Mr. Omarov had told the FBI agent who brought him from Prague to New York, on the plane, “But even half of them don’t consider me a thief because, for example, half of them don’t recognize I am a thief. They don’t want me to become too powerful and have a competition. It shows this is Guli’s enemy because Guli made me a thief.”   

“They attempted,” the prosecutor argued, to kill Ms. Alinejad “for money” and “to maintain their position” and to “climb ranks.” Step by step he took the jury through the evidence, detailing how the two mobsters hired “their lieutenant”, an Azerbaijani man called Khalid Mehdiyev, who was living in the Bronx, to carry out the murder. “They arranged a cash delivery of $30,000 … They provided intelligence about the victim, about when she was at home, when she was on the phone, so she could be gunned down with an assault rifle.”   

Mr. Mehdiyev, who testified in the trial, was arrested by law enforcement near Ms. Alinejad’s home on July 28, 2020. Officers found a loaded AK-47 style assault rifle in his car, as well as a ski mask. Mr. Mehdiyev has pleaded guilty to all charges and is cooperating with the government in hope for a lower sentence.      

“You will struggle to find a more untrustworthy witness than him,” the defense attorney, Mr. Martin, argued later. He described Mr. Mehdiyev as a “manipulative, violent, lying person.” 

Mr. Martin, who was defending Mr. Amirov, tried to cast doubt on the electronic evidence – the hundreds of text messages and call logs –  the government provided.                 

“The government’s trail of electronic evidence cannot place Rafat behind any keyboard,” he said. He described the evidence as a “600 mile long elephant in the room,” saying there was no evidence that Mr. Amirov sent nor wrote the messages, alleged to be his. He told the jury that the way the prosecutions had shown these text messages, always labeling them as “Rafat” and “Polad” and “Khalid” was misleading and an attempt to make them believe there was no doubt the messages were in fact sent by the defendants. 

“The evidence is not there. It wasn’t presented to you. It’s not there.” Mr. Martin said, and empathized that his client was not on trial for his criminal life. “Rafat is not on trial for being a vor.”

Vors, he argued, “have a code that they believe separates them from the common criminal.” He cited an expert witness the government had called,  Louise Shelly, who “also told us that the code included the treatment of women.” According to the code, he said, bosses are not supposed to kill people, unless that person has hurt “the vor or the vor’s honor.” 

“Women are not typically seen as being able to harm one’s honor … Masih Alinejad did not hurt Rafat Amirov and he had no reason to kill her.” If he did, the attorney insisted, “that could be grounds to question his vor status … It makes no sense.”    

The defense attorney, who argued for Mr. Omarov took a slightly different approach. Elena Fast, wearing four and half inch high heels, started her summation with an acting number.    

“Imagine you get home,” she told the jury, “after a long week at work… Friday night and the movie you are watching,” she said, was called  “The Pizza Delivery Hitman.”  

Mr. Mehdiyev had testified that he had hung out and even briefly worked at a pizzeria in the Bronx, called Peppino’s Pizzeria. He testified that while he worked there, he was simultaneously orchestrating kidnappings and extortions, on the phone with criminals he had hired to carry out crimes for him in other countries, like Turkey, while he was taking pizza orders in the Bronx. Ms. Fast did not find his testimony believable.       

“No James Bond movie would hire a clown as a hitman,” she said, and argued that Mr. Mehdiyev had testified to having committed crimes in Azerbaijan, Turkey, the Czech Republic, Ukraine, the Russian Federation, and called himself a “super violent criminal” but he had “no arrests” and was “never convicted of any crime.”  

She also questioned the close relationship Mr. Mehdiyev claimed to have had with the “Guli, the most powerful vor in Europe.” There was no evidence, she said, that Guli even knew him.  

Ms. Fast further wondered why the government had not called more witnesses. Mr. Mehdiyev testified that, while working at the pizzeria, he had met a young man called Man Man, whom he had asked to commit the killing of Ms. Alinejad for him. He also mentioned someone by the name of Alex, a rapper, whom he offered the job to, so the rapper could make money to finance his music career. Both Man Man and Alex, according to Mr. Mehdiyev testimony, had turned down the job.  

“Where are they?” Ms. Fast asked. “Why didn’t they testify?” She paused. “Because Khalid never asked them.” 

“The most important part of a crime is to get away,.” she told the jury, attempting to cast more doubt on Mr. Mehdiyev’s narrative. 

Mr. Mehdiyev had spent days outside of Ms. Alinejad’s home in Brooklyn, sitting in his car, with a loaded rifle, telling his boss, Mr. Omarov, he was waiting for her to come outside so he could shoot her. One the day, he was arrested, he attempted to open her door, was recorded on her porch by a surveillance camera outside of her house. 

 “You can’t really get away if you’re on the ring camera.” Ms. Fast wondered why he had gone near the house in “broad daylight.” 

“And he looks like the size of a mountain,” Ms. Fast said, referring to Mr. Mehdiyev, who is five feet eleven inches and weighed 280 pounds, according to the ID card he was given in the federal detention center, where he was detained later. 

Mr. Mehdiyev also took a picture of himself outside of Ms. Alinejad’s house, which he sent to Mr. Omarov, to prove, as he testified, that he was at the location of their target. “He’s taking selfies outside the journalist house?

Does this look like he’s trying to get away with murder?”  

She reminded the jury of the many lies Mr. Mehdiyev had texted to Mr. Omarov. He had told him he had a brought a girl with to knock on the door to lure Ms. Alinejad outside. There was no girl. He had told him, he had asked a second person to stand in the back of the house, and shoot Ms. Alinejad in case she went to her backyard. There was no second man. He said he had spoken to a Chinese man in the garden. There was no Chinese man. And finally he told his boss, he was going to rent a room in Ms. Alinejad’s house, which also had not been true. 

The prosecution had argued that Mr. Mehdiyev had told these lies to buy himself more time. Ms. Alinejad had traveled to San Francisco, and was not at home for a week, which Mr. Mehdiyev, who was waiting outside her house in his car, did not know.    

But to Ms. Fast his lies were “scam messages.” Ms. Fast argued that neither Mr. Mehdiyev nor her client, Mr. Omarov, ever intended to kill Ms. Alinejad, but that they were stalling to eventually ask for more money.     

Then she turned to the assault rifle that officers retrieved from Mr. Mehdiyev’s car, when they arrested him. She picked the box, which contained this intrinsic piece of evidence, and in her four and half inch heels demonstrated to the jury how heavy and large the rifle was.  

“The gun is heavy.” She said and asked, “drive-by-shooting on a bicycle?” 

Mr. Mehdiyev had also told Mr. Omarov that he was planning to get a bike and shoot Ms. Alinejad while riding it down her block. “He said he was planning to rent a bike and do a drive-by-shooting with a bazooka?” 

“The gun never leaves the car.” She argued, aiming at the charge of possession of a firearm. “Also zero proof that he had the gun on him besides on July 28… No messages discussing the purchase of the gun.”   

When a detective from the New York Police Department arrested Mr. Mehdiyev, after he had sped through a stop sign, he found a suitcase, Ms. Fast argued, “that was closed and zipped… It was a prop… You know, what’s going to come next… We need more money… He was not going to kill Ms. Alinejad. There was no plot to murder ”  

Finally, she argued that there were no Whatsapp messages tying her client to Iran. “Omarov’s whatsapp is not pinging to Iran.”  

The prosecution will get a chance to hold a rebuttal statement on Thursday, giving the government an advantage by having the last word the jury hears, since they have the burden of proof.  

Before Ms. Fast left the lectern, she told the jury that they should remember that for “every argument” they would make she would have “a good response.” She added, “If you have any doubts you need to fight for those doubts.”