MANHATTAN – AN ATTEMPTED ASSASSIN was sentenced to 15 years in prison in Manhattan federal court on Wednesday for his role in one of several schemes to murder dissident Iranian journalist Masih Alinejad, CBS News reports.
Carlisle Rivera and another man were hired for $100,000 by an agent of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to shoot Alinejad during a 2024 speaking engagement in Connecticut, according to prosecutors. Rivera reportedly met the agent during an earlier stint in prison for murder. Two other men were sentenced in October of last year for a separate plot to shoot Alinejad at her home in Brooklyn, which her husband said in court on Wednesday the couple has now been forced to flee.
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Alinejad at the sentencing praised the court, but said she felt justice would not be served until the Iranian regime is toppled and leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is jailed, stating that she would like to see him “humiliated” in the same way as former Venezuelan president and current Metropolitan Detention Center inmate Nicolas Maduro, who was captured by U.S. forces and brought to Brooklyn last month.
“President [Donald] Trump has an army, everything, power. I’m just an Iranian, unarmed woman, with a lot of hair, with a big voice. That’s it,” Alinejad said, referencing a separate alleged assasination scheme by Iran against the president. “And that shows you that the regime in Iran is really scared of its own people.”
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