A Pakistani man, accused of plotting to assassinate United States President Donald Trump, has blamed Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards for pressurising him to plot, several media outlets in the US have reported.
The man has been identified as Asif Raza Merchant, 47. He was charged in September 2024 for seeking to hire a hitman to get unidentified US politicians assassinated. He has pleaded not guilty in his testimony, while blaming Iran elite Islamic Revolutionary Guards.
He had run into some Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) sleuths, who posed as killers for hire, as Raza was trying to approach hitmen for the job.
Raza has testified on Wednesday in a US court, where he said that he was trying to protect his family, who are residing in the Iranian capital, Tehran. He has said that he thought he would get caught before anyone was killed, media outlets in the US have reported.
“My family was under threat, and I had to do this,” he testified in Urdu, which was translated by an Urdu interpreter. The Washington Post has reported, “I did not want to do this willingly.”
He has further said in his testimony that he was not ordered to kill a specific person, but said that his Iranian contact had mentioned three people in connection to the plot: Trump, former President Joe Biden, and former UN ambassador Nikki Haley.
Raza's trial comes amid the US-Iran war, wherein the two sides have repeatedly carried out strikes against each other. Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, was assassinated in the US-Israel strikes on Tehran on February 28.
Since Tehran has been carrying out airstrikes deep into Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, and some other countries.
The US officials had previously maintained that Raza has “close ties to Iran” and described his alleged plot as “straight out of the Iranian regime's playbook.”
The allegations by the US officials have been confirmed by Raza, who had earlier said that he started working with a member of the Guards in about 2022. He has said that the man had asked him if he was “interested in doing some work with the Iranian government,” the New York Times has reported.
Subsequently, the man Raza came in touch with instructed him to orchestrate a plot involving arranging protests, stealing documents, laundering money, and having “someone” killed.
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