Published 7 August 2024 at 10.15
Foreign. A Pakistani man is accused by the US Department of Justice of ordering political assassinations, possibly of Donald Trump. The White House and the media highlight that the man has “connections to Iran” – but no real evidence of Iranian involvement is presented.
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Asif Merchant, 46 , is suspected of traveling to New York and working with what he believed to be assassins to carry out the killings in late August or early September, according to federal prosecutors.
He was arrested on July 12 as he tried to leave United States, shortly after meeting a person pretending to be an assassin. Merchant is now in federal custody.
According to CNN, the federal police agency FBI believes that Donald Trump and other current and former US government officials may have been the targets of the plot.
The FBI was contacted by a person who raised the alarm that Asif Merchant wanted to kill politicians. They then had the source set up a meeting with Merchant and then with FBI agents posing as assassins. Merchant is said to have promised an advance payment of 5,000 dollars to the latter.
No evidence has been found that Merchant was involved in the actual assassination attempt on Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13 – an actual assassination attempt by Thomas Crooks that took place the day after the arrest of Asif Merchant.
< strong>“Connections to Iran”
CNN highlights that the man has “connections to Iran”. These connections consist of the fact that he “spent time in Iran and has relatives there,” writes CNN. It appears from the court documents that he has a wife and children both in Pakistan and in Iran.
What we actually know about the motive is that Asif Merchant himself reportedly expressed that he wanted to attack people in the United States who he considered “hurting Pakistan and the Muslim world”.
– These are not normal people, he added in interrogating his intended victims.
Donald Trump tweeted in late July on his social media platform Truth Social that Iran should be “wiped off the face of the earth” if he were assassinated. This after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu then spread claims that Iran was planning to assassinate Trump.
Iran has consistently denied all accusations that it had any such plans. Iran's UN representation states in a comment to CNN about the current case that the Iranian government's stance is that it wants to put Donald Trump on trial for the assassination of Iran's top general and national hero Qasem Soleimani in January 2020.
USA US Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement on Tuesday that the US “will not tolerate attempts by an authoritarian regime to target US public officials and endanger US national security”.
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