Iran is recruiting members Efforts are being made to attack and silence dissidents living on European and US soil against the Hells Angels biker gang and other criminal enterprises, a new report reveals.
The covert operations conducted by high-level units of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its intelligence ministry have targeted a former Iranian military officer living in Maryland, an Iranian-American activist and journalist living in New York City, and a reporter exiled in London. Washington Post.
“We’re not dealing with the usual suspects,” Matt Jewkes, the head of counterterrorism police in the United Kingdom, told the newspaper. “We have a hostile state actor who believes the battlefield is borderless and that individuals in London are just as legitimate targets as individuals in Iran.”
The report cites data from the Washington Institute that links Iran to 88 violent plots over the past five years, including assassination and kidnapping attempts. UK authorities have reportedly tracked more than 16 plots in the past two years alone.
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Masih Alinejad, an Iranian-American journalist living in New York City, was one of the targets of the Iranian conspiracies. (Fox News)
In one of these plots, Naji Sharifi Zindashti, an alleged Iran-based heroin smuggling kingpin, entered into a $350,000 contract with two members of the Hells Angels biker gang in Canada to murder an Iranian fugitive and his wife who were living under different identities in Maryland.
Citing an indictment in the US earlier this year, The Washington Post reported that one biker gang member told another via encrypted messaging that “I’m going to make sure to hit this guy in the head with at least half a clip” and “We’re going to have to separate his head from his torso.”
US officials have reportedly described the fugitive as a former IRGC officer who has now turned into a terrorist. A CIA informant.
According to the Washington Post, court records show one Hells Angels member was identified as 43-year-old Damien Ryan, who has a criminal record in Canada and went by the nicknames “Berserker” and “Mr. Wolf,” while the other was identified as 29-year-old Adam Pearson, who fled Canada to Minneapolis to avoid murder charges.
The indictment, seen by the newspaper, says the pair signed on to the plot in March 2021 and received an initial $20,000 payment to cover travel expenses. However, the plot ultimately fell apart that same month when Belgian and Dutch security forces cracked the encrypted messaging service they were using to communicate and arrested dozens of alleged drug traffickers in Europe, including other Hells Angels members, the newspaper adds.
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A man wearing a Hells Angels jacket sits on his motorcycle in Berlin, Germany, in April 2014. The Washington Post cites court documents saying the biker group has ties to Iran’s plots to target dissidents abroad. (Paul Zinken/Picture Alliance via Getty Images)
Pearson was reportedly arrested by FBI agents in Minnesota and deported back to Canada, while Ryan was captured during a raid on a home in Ottawa in February 2022 that reportedly yielded a cache of weapons and nearly $100,000 in cash.
In another plot linked to the Hells Angels, Iran hired a member of the gang to bomb a synagogue in Essen, Germany, the paper says.
Then in March this year, exiled Iranian journalist Pouria Zeraiti — who runs the London-based Iran International news channel, which is banned in Iran — was stabbed four times outside his home in the British capital despite police making extensive efforts to protect him, The Washington Post reports.
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An undated image of Naji Sharifi Zindashti, who the FBI says is wanted for “alleged involvement in criminal activity, including the attempted murder of two residents of the state of Maryland.” (FBI)
The paper says the attack was allegedly carried out by hired criminals who passed through airport security checks and fled to eastern Europe, where they have been identified but are still on the loose.
Last year, the Justice Department also charged three people in an Iran-backed kidnapping and murder plot against an Iranian-American journalist Masih Alinejad, who was targeted He was arrested in New York City for speaking out against the regime’s human rights abuses.
According to the Washington Post, a gunman who came to his home in Brooklyn in July 2022 was part of a Russian gang network and criminal organization called “Thieves in Law.”
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Iran’s mission to the United Nations denied any involvement by the country in these plots, telling the newspaper that “the Islamic Republic of Iran has neither intention nor plans to engage in acts of assassination or kidnapping, whether in the West or in any other country.”
