March 4 (Reuters) – A Pakistani man accused of planning to kill President Donald Trump told jurors on Wednesday that he did not willingly work with Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps to devise the plot, media said.
The Justice Department accused Asif Merchant of trying to recruit people in the United States in the plan targeting Trump and other U.S. politicians in retaliation for Washington’s killing of the Corps’ top commander, Qassem Soleimani.
The Corps has a central role in Iran, with its combination of military and economic power and an intelligence network.
“I was not wanting to do this so willingly,” the New York Times quoted Merchant as telling a court during his trial for terrorism and murder-for-hire charges, adding that he participated to protect his family in Tehran.
Prosecutors rejected Merchant’s claim, citing a “lack of evidentiary support for a true duress or coercion,” according to a letter sent on Tuesday to the judge in the case dating from 2024.
According to the newspaper, Merchant said he had never been ordered to kill a specific person but that his Iranian handler named three people in the course of conversations in the Iranian capital.
In addition to Trump, these were Joe Biden, the president at the time; Nikki Haley, who unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination for the 2024 presidential election.
Lawyers for Merchant did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The White House did not immediately comment.
The trial started last week, days before Trump ordered strikes on Iran carried out with Israel that killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and top officials in the Middle Eastern nation.
Trump cited an alleged Iranian plot when he spoke to ABC News on Sunday about a joint U.S.-Israeli operation that killed Khamenei, saying, “I got him before he got me.”
Tehran has denied accusations that it targeted Trump and other U.S. officials.
(Reporting by Jasper Ward in Washington; Editing by Donna Bryson and Clarence Fernandez)
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