FBI Adds IRGC Member Shahram Poursafi to Most Wanted Terrorists List, With a Reward of Up to $20 Million
The FBI Washington Field Office announced on November 10 that it had added Shahram Poursafi, a member of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, to the Most Wanted Terrorists list and released seeking-information posters on three of his associates. The FBI said that from October 2021 to April 2022, Poursafi allegedly solicited the murder of two former U.S. government officials.
According to court documents, Poursafi, also known as Mehdi Rezayi, allegedly worked on behalf of the IRGC-Quds Force and sought to pay individuals in the United States $300,000 to commit the murders, likely in retaliation for the January 2020 death of Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani. A complaint filed in August 2022 charged him with using interstate commerce facilities in the commission of a murder-for-hire and with providing and attempting to provide material support to a transnational murder plot. Gregory Heeb, the special agent in charge of the Washington Field Office's Counterterrorism Division, said the FBI will not stand for the IRGC's brazen attempts to silence, harm or murder activists, dissidents, journalists and public officials, and hopes the posters will help disrupt lethal plots.
The three seeking-information posters name alleged Quds Force officials Mohammad Reza Ansari, Abolfazl Alizadeh and Mohammad Hossein Shamoradizadeh. The FBI said the Quds Force's Unit 840 is responsible for developing lethal plotting operations, that Ansari is a Unit 840 deputy who supported Quds Force operations in Syria, and that, with Poursafi's support, he allegedly planned and attempted to assassinate the same two former U.S. officials. In June 2023, the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control designated both Ansari and Poursafi for acting on behalf of the Quds Force.
The U.S. State Department's Rewards for Justice program is offering up to $20 million for information leading to Poursafi's arrest and conviction, and the FBI asks anyone with information on the four men to call 1-800-CALL-FBI or submit a tip online. The charges described are allegations, and Poursafi is presumed innocent unless proven guilty.
Source: Federal Bureau of Investigation
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
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