WASHINGTON (AP) — An Iranian who federal prosecutors say runs a criminal network targeting dissidents and activists abroad has been charged along with two Canadians with conspiring to kill two people, including a defector from Iran who was in the United States had fled.

The criminal case unsealed Monday is part of what Justice Department officials have described as a troubling trend of cross-border repression in which activists from countries like Iran and China single out dissidents and defectors for campaigns of harassment, intimidation and sometimes violence.

In this case, prosecutors say Naji Sharifi Zindashti conspired with two Canadian men between December 2020 and March 2021 to kill two Maryland residents. The intended victims of the contract killing were not named in an indictment, but prosecutors described them as having fled together to the United States after one of them defected from Iran.

The Justice Department said the conspiracy was ultimately foiled.

“To those in Iran plotting assassinations on U.S. soil and to the criminal actors who work with them, today’s indictments send a clear message: The Justice Department will pursue you for as long as it takes – and wherever you are — and ensure justice.” Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen, the Justice Department’s top national security official, said in a statement.

This is not the first criminal case targeting Iranian efforts to target perceived political opponents of the regime.

The Justice Department has previously charged three men with killing an Iranian-American author and activist who spoke out against human rights abuses there in an attack allegedly originating in Iran, and also filed charges in connection with a failed plot to kill John Bolton , the former Trump administration national security adviser.

FBI Assistant Director Suzanne Turner of the bureau’s counterintelligence division said in a statement that the latest indictments “show a pattern of Iranian groups attempting to assassinate U.S. citizens on U.S. soil.”

“Mr. The alleged conspiracy by Zindashti and his accomplices is reprehensible and the FBI will not tolerate such acts against US citizens and we will continue to pursue these individuals until they are brought to the US to face trial.” , she said.

The latest case comes at a time of simmering tensions between the United States and Iran, including after a weekend drone strike in northeastern Jordan near the Syrian border that killed three American soldiers and which the Biden administration attributed to Iranian-backed militias . On Monday, officials said U.S. forces may have mistaken an enemy drone for an American one and allowed it to pass unchallenged into a desert base in Jordan.

Zindashti is believed to still be living in Iran. U.S. officials describe him as a drug trafficker who operated a criminal network on behalf of Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security that staged assassinations, kidnappings and other acts of cross-border repression against perceived critics of the Iranian regime, including in the United States

In a separate but related move, the Treasury Department announced sanctions Monday against Zindashti and several employees that would ban them from doing business in the U.S. or with a U.S. person.

The United Kingdom also imposed sanctions. British security officials have warned 15 Iranians in Britain of threats to their lives over the past two years. British officials say Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps often enlists organized crime groups to carry out such attacks.

According to the indictment, Zindashti coordinated his efforts with two Canadian men, Damion Patrick John Ryan and Adam Richard Pearson, and used an encrypted messaging service to recruit potential assassins to travel to the United States to carry out the killings.

According to prosecutors, Ryan, identified in the indictment as a “full member of the outlaw Hells Angels motorcycle club,” and Pearson are currently imprisoned in Canada on unrelated charges.

No attorneys are known from court records for any of the three men, all of whom are being charged in federal court in Minnesota with conspiracy to exploit interstate commerce – one of the defendants was living there “illegally” under an assumed name while the conspiracy was being planned Committing contract killings. Pearson threatens more firearm crimes.

_____

Associated Press writer Jill Lawless in London contributed to this report.