(NY Times) Four Iranians who plotted to kidnap a prominent Iranian American journalist in Brooklyn paid a private investigator to watch their target, using a woman in California as a go-between, the authorities said.
That woman, Niloufar Bahadorifar, pleaded guilty in Manhattan on Thursday to a charge of conspiracy to violate U.S. economic sanctions on Iran by helping channel money to the investigator.
In court, Ms. Bahadorifar said that while she made the payment, she was unaware it was used to pay the investigator to conduct surveillance. And prosecutors have not accused her of participating in the plot to abduct the journalist, Masih Alinejad, an outspoken critic of the Iranian government’s human rights abuses and its treatment of women and political opponents.
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