The United States Department of Justice on Friday announced the indictment of an Iranian man who, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), was tasked with planning the assassination of President-elect Donald Trump. He allegedly received the order for the murder from an Iranian government official, reports TASR according to the AP and Reuters agencies.
According to the ministry’s statement, Farhád Šákerí informed the US authorities that on October 7 of this year he was tasked with providing a plan to track and then kill Trump. He should have received the order from a representative of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.
The US Department of Justice identified 51-year-old Shakeri as a member of the Revolutionary Guards with a residence in Tehran. It said he immigrated to the U.S. as a child and was deported around 2008 after a robbery conviction. The prosecutor’s office specified that Shakeri is at large and is probably in Iran.
“There are few actors in the world that pose as serious a threat to the national security of the United States as Iran,” Justice Minister Merrick Garland said in a statement.
Trump’s spokesman, Steven Cheung, said the president-elect is aware of the order for the assassination plan and will not be deterred from “returning to the White House and restoring peace to the entire world.”
