Pakistani man charged in elaborate assassination plot against Trump

New York, Aug 7 : A Pakistani citizen has been charged in an elaborate plot that reads like a spy thriller to assassinate Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.

US Attorney General Merrick Garland, who announced the charges against Asif Merchant on Tuesday, indicated that the target was Trump, but did not name him.

"For years, the Justice Department has been working aggressively to counter Iran's brazen and unrelenting efforts to retaliate against American public officials for the killing of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani," he said.

Trump was the US President who ordered the killing of Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad in 2020, which points the assassination plot towards Trump.

According to court documents, others may also have been intended victims because of the mention of targets in the plural.

Federal Bureau of Investigation(FBI) Chief Christopher Wray said, "This dangerous murder-for-hire plot exposed in today's charges allegedly was orchestrated by a Pakistani national with close ties to Iran and is straight out of the Iranian playbook."

The alleged plotter, who is also known as Asif Raza Merchant, told officials that he has two wives, one each in Pakistan and in Iran, as well as children in both countries.

In the complaint filed in the Federal court in Brooklyn, the plot reads like a spy thriller with an elaborate scheme to burglarise the home of a target, creating diversions with protests and rallies, and killing the politician.

It also included a show of bonding between Merchant, 46, and the undercover officers he thought were professional killers.

The court papers said the plot involved multiple elements: stealing documents or USB drives from a target's home; planning protests, and killing a politician or government official.

Merchant made up code names for each element in the plot: "tee-shirt" for protests, "flannel shirt" for stealing documents, "fleece jacket" for the assassination, and "yarn-dye" for their meetings.

To entice the person he contacted first and who informed officials, Merchant told him that he has an uncle in the "yarn-dyed" business in Pakistan and he could go into business with them.

He asked the government source he thought was an assassin for hire to explain how the target would die in different scenarios.

The revelation about this plot comes less than a month after the July 13 failed assassination attempt on Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania.

However, there does not seem to be a connection between the plot by Merchant and that attempt, which officials have said was carried out by a lone wolf, a person unconnected to any group or organisation.

The plot failed because Merchant tried to recruit FBI agents for the assassination attempt.

"Fortunately, the assassins Merchant tried to hire were undercover FBI agents," said Christie Curtis, the Acting Assistant Director of the New York FBI Field Office.

He was arrested on July 12 as he was getting ready to catch a flight out of the country.

Merchant arrived in the US in April from Pakistan after spending time in Iran, according to the version of the plot in court papers.

He contacted a person he thought could help him and that person reported it to law enforcement and became a confidential source.

In mid-June, Merchant met with people he thought were hitmen, but were undercover US law enforcement officers (the UCs) in New York.

He told them he wanted them to steal documents, arrange protests at political rallies, and kill a "political person".

The plot would have to be carried out after he left the country and in either the last week of August or the first week of September they would be told who the target was, Merchant told the undercover officers.

He received $5,000 from overseas and made a down payment to the undercover agents.

According to the court papers, one of the agents said after getting the money, "Now we know we're going forward. We're doing this," to which Merchant responded: "Yes, absolutely."

Political violence is a constant worry in the US.

Last week, a man was arrested in Virginia for allegedly threatening to kill the Democratic Party presidential nominee Kamala Harris.

"Kamala Harris needs to be put on fire alive. I will do it personally if no one else does... I want her to suffer a slow agonising death," Frank Lucio Carillo posted on a right-wing social media site, according to the FBI complaint in a Federal court.

He also allegedly threatened President Joe Biden and FBI Chief Wray.

(Arul Louis can be contacted at arul.l@ians.in and followed at @arulouis)