US charges four with plot to kidnap New York journalist

US prosecutors have charged four Iranians with plotting to kidnap a New York journalist and “human rights activist” who was critical of Iran, according to a Justice Department indictment unsealed on Tuesday.

In recent years, Iranian intelligence officers have tricked a number of overseas activists to travel to destinations where they were kidnapped and sent back to Iran, US authorities claimed.

While the indictment did not name the target of the plot, Reuters news agency has confirmed she is Iranian-American journalist Masih Alinejad, who has contributed to the US government-funded Voice of America Persian language service and reports on human rights issues in Iran.

Asked by Reuters to confirm that Alinejad was the target of the plot, the Department of Justice declined to comment.

But Alinejad, reached by phone by Reuters after the indictment was released, said she was in a state of shock. She said she had been working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation since the agency approached her eight months ago with photographs taken by the plotters.

“They showed me the Islamic Republic had gotten very close,” she said.

The four Iranians hired private investigators under false pretenses to surveil the journalist in Brooklyn, videotaping her family and home as part of a plot to kidnap her, according to prosecutors.

The four defendants planned “to forcibly take their intended victim to Iran, where the victim’s fate would have been uncertain at best,” Audrey Strauss, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said.

Alinejad said Iranian operatives had tried multiple times to lure her to Turkey with threats and promises to meet family, she said.

FBI agents warned Alinejad earlier this year that Iran was planning to kidnap her, moving the journalist and her husband to a series of safe houses as they investigated the case.

She said she was still reeling from reading the indictment.

“I can’t believe I’m not even safe in America,” she said.