Woman Who Unwittingly Aided Iranian Kidnapping Plot Gets 4-Year Sentence

Niloufar Bahadorifar apologized after transferring money to help in a plan against the journalist Masih Alinehad, calling her “a hero to all Iranians.”

Woman Who Unwittingly Aided Iranian Kidnapping Plot Gets 4-Year Sentence

New York Times

By Colin Moynihan

April 7, 2023, 3:03 p.m. ET

In the summer of 2020, Niloufar Bahadorifar, an expatriate Iranian in California, received a message from someone in her home country asking her to send money to the PayPal account of a person in Manhattan. Ms. Bahadorifar passed along $670 and forwarded proof of the transaction to Iran.

The payment may have seemed unremarkable, but federal prosecutors have said it was part of an audacious plot to kidnap an Iranian-born journalist who fled the authoritarian government in Tehran in 2009 and had been living in New York City.

Iranian operatives employed private investigators in the United States who were unaware of the plan but spied on the journalist, Masih Alinejad, even setting up a live, high-definition video feed of her home, the prosecutors said.

Ms. Bahadorifar’s payment went to one of those investigators. She was not accused of taking part in the kidnapping conspiracy, but pleaded guilty last year to a charge of conspiracy to violate U.S. economic sanctions on Iran by helping channel money to the investigator.

On Friday, a federal judge in Manhattan sentenced Ms. Bahadorifar to four years in prison.

Ms. Alinejad, appearing in court, said that being targeted by the Iranian government would not deter her activism but acknowledged that it had taken a toll. She had experienced nightmares, she said, and had been living in safe houses after being forced to move out of her home of 10 years.

“I no longer feel safe in America,” she told Judge Ronnie Abrams of Federal District Court in Manhattan, adding: “I miss my tree-lined streets in my corner of Brooklyn, and I miss my neighbors.”

Minutes later, Ms. Bahadorifar tearfully apologized for her crime, at one point addressing Ms. Alinejad, who was seated in the gallery.

“I am humiliated to have been involved in any attempt to harm you, even if I was unaware of it,” she said. “You are a hero to all Iranians.”

Her punishment may be the only one to result from an indictment that was unsealed in 2021 and detailed the plot. The other defendants — an Iranian intelligence official, Alireza Shavaroghi Farahani, and three operatives, Mahmoud Khazein, Kiya Sadeghi and Omid Noori — all live in Iran.