An Iranian-American accused of plotting to get Mexican gangsters to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to Washington was due in federal court yesterday in New York, when he was expected to enter a plea.
Manssor Arbabsiar, a naturalized US citizen holding Iranian and US passports, who lived for many years in Texas where he worked as a used car salesman, was arrested last month at New York’s John F. Kennedy international airport.
He and co-defendant Gholam Shakuri, who is at large, allegedly conspired to “kill the Ambassador to the United States of Saudi Arabia, while the Ambassador was in the United States,” according to court documents.
Iran has strongly denied any involvement in what the US says was a plot by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ elite Quds force to kill the ambassador by hiring assassins from a Mexican drug cartel for US$1.5 million.
To set up the alleged hit, Arbabsiar allegedly arranged for the wiring of US$100,000 to the US as a down payment, the indictment says.
The two co-defendants are also accused of planning for a “weapon of mass destruction” to be used against the ambassador, creating “substantial risk of serious bodily injury to others by destroying and damaging structures.”
Arbabsiar was due to be arraigned yesterday, federal prosecutors said.
The charges have caused another flare up in tensions between the US and Iran, already at loggerheads over Washington’s belief that Tehran is using a civilian nuclear program to mask a bomb-making project.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has ridiculed the allegations, saying Tehran will not investigate the US claims.
Iranian Intelligence Minister Heydar Moslehi, who heads up Iran’s espionage organizations, said the US allegations were “too cheap to believe.”
According to the US Department of Justice and the FBI, Arbabsiar confessed after his arrest to trying to contract a Mexican drug cartel to assassinate the Saudi envoy, Adel al-Jubeir, possibly through the bombing of a Washington restaurant.
He allegedly said he organized the hit on behalf of his cousin, whom he described as a high-ranking officer in the Quds Force, a shadowy special operations unit of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards.
US officials said they became aware of the plot because Arbabsiar’s contact in the cartel was in fact a paid FBI informant.
According to Texas property records, Arbabsiar owned several properties across the beach town of Corpus Christi, including multiple businesses. He was involved in, or partially owned, several used car lots. Arbabsiar also owned a fast-food outlet at a local mall, according to records.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was