New York: A Pakistani man has been convicted of plotting with Iran to assassinate US President Donald Trump in a verdict handed down coincidentally while Washington and Tehran are locked in a war.
A Federal jury on Friday found Asif Merchant guilty of trying to hire hitmen to kill Trump and, possibly, other politicians, under the direction of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).
The 47-year-old Pakistani faces life in prison when he is sentenced.
The plot was to have taken place in 2024 during the presidential campaign, but was foiled because a fellow Pakistani he approached for help with the plot was an informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
“The FBI and our partners stopped that deadly plot,” the agency’s Director Kash Patel said after the verdict.
“This was not the first attempt by Iran to harm our citizens on US soil; the other efforts also failed”, he added.
Merchant was arrested in July 2024 as he was leaving the US and charged in the case the next month.
War Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Wednesday that the US killed the Iranian mastermind of the plot, but did not identify the person.
The dates for the trial that started last week in a Brooklyn Federal court in the city were set long before the Iran conflict.
The judge presiding over the trial, Eric Komitee, remarked about the coincidence, “This trial is happening in interesting times”.
During the trial, Merchant admitted to participating in the plot, claiming it was because of threats by Iran against his family in that country.
He said that he received spycraft training from the IRGC and was also given two other names besides Trump for possible attacks — President Joe Biden and Nikki Haley, the Indian American politician who initially pursued the Republican Party presidential nomination.
Merchant had two wives, one in his homeland, Pakistan, and another in Iran, which he visited often and where he was recruited by the IRGC.
The prosecution said that he began working for the IRGC in Pakistan in 2022 or 2023, and by his own admission, was sent later in 2023 to the US to look for IRGC recruits.
The prosecutor in the case, Nina Gupta, told the court on Monday that Merchant used a clothing business as cover for the operation, and he wanted to attack those whom he believed were against “Pakistan and the Muslim world”.
He told the court that his mission was changed the next year and sent back to the US to hire “Mafia” members to steal documents, organise protests, and arrange the assassination of one of the three politicians who were targeted.
According to the prosecution, he contacted an acquaintance in New York identified as Nadeem Ali to help with the plot.
Ali, who was an FBI informant, notified the agency, and undercover officers came on board pretending to be hitmen for hire, according to the prosecution’s case.
Merchant gave the undercover officers a $5,000 down payment to carry out the assassination, and he was recorded sketching out the plot on a napkin in a New York hotel room.
In a secret recording of a meeting with the undercover agents played in court, Merchant told them, “Maybe you can, say, kill someone”.
And he added, “Maybe it’s some political person”.
The prosecution said that he searched the internet for places where Trump was holding rallies.
In another coincidence, totally unrelated to Merchant’s plot, a day after his arrest, a man tried to assassinate Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania, missing him by inches, with the bullet grazing his ear.
(IANS)
