By Kanishka Singh
WASHINGTON, Jan 28 (Reuters) – A Brooklyn man was sentenced to 15 years in prison on Wednesday for taking part in what prosecutors called a failed Iran-backed murder-for-hire plot against Masih Alinejad, a prominent Iranian dissident living in the U.S., the Justice Department said.
Carlisle Rivera, also known as “Pop,” previously pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire and one count of conspiracy to commit stalking before U.S. District Judge Lewis Liman for the Southern District of New York, who imposed Wednesday’s sentence, the Justice Department said in a statement.
Alinejad, who fled Iran in 2009, is a longtime critic of Iran’s head-covering laws and a journalist. She has promoted videos of women violating those laws to her millions of social media followers. She was living in Brooklyn at the time of the alleged plot on her life.
The case was part of a crackdown by the Justice Department on what it calls transnational repression: the targeting by authoritarian governments of political opponents on foreign soil.
Prosecutors said Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard Corps and its intelligence officials have repeatedly tried to target Alinejad.
Iran has dismissed as baseless allegations that its intelligence officers sought to kidnap or kill her.
Other people have also been convicted in the U.S. and sentenced in relation to the alleged plot.
(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; editing by Edward Tobin)
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