The United States Department of the Treasury has sanctioned four Iranian intelligence officials it alleges targeted an Iranian-American journalist and human rights activist living in the US and Iranian dissidents in other countries in an effort to silence critics of the Iranian government, Al Jazeera reports.
The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control said in a press statement on Friday that senior Iran-based intelligence official Alireza Shahvaroghi Farahani led a group of Iranian intelligence officers in a plot to kidnap a US-based reporter.
Though not mentioned by name in the Treasury’s statement or on its website, the journalist and activist is presumably Masih Alinejad, a reporter who has contributed to the US government-funded Voice of America Persian language service and reports on human rights issues in Iran and whose case involving the Iranian intelligence officers has made international news.
“The Iranian government’s kidnapping plot is another example of its continued attempt to silence critical voices, wherever they may be,” Director of the Office of Foreign Assets Control Andrea M Gacki said in the statement.
“Targeting dissidents abroad demonstrates that the government’s repression extends far beyond Iran’s borders,” she added.
