A federal judge gave a would-be assassin the maximum 15 years in prison on Wednesday for plotting to kill an Iranian American writer on behalf of Tehran, after hearing the woman who was targeted describe multiple attempts on her life. Judge Lewis J. Liman said Carlisle Rivera's written conversations as he plotted to kill journalist and human rights advocate Masih Alinejad in Brooklyn in 2024 were "chilling," and that Rivera inflicted "great harm" on Alinejad and her husband. Addressing the court, the couple described how assassination plots forced them to limit interactions with their children as they frequently changed residences and dodged threats from an unrelenting Iran, per the AP.
"I'm just a woman," Alinejad said. "My weapon is my voice. My weapon is my social media." She urged the judge to give Rivera the maximum sentence to send a message to anyone "targeting US citizens on US soil" and to "protect unarmed people like me now facing massacre in my country." People in Iran, Alinejad said, are "facing guns and bullets ... to protect the global security," including for Americans. During a break in the proceedings, Alinejad approached Rivera's fiancee, who sobbed as she hugged Alinejad, telling her, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry." Before the sentence was announced, Rivera, 51, told the judge: "I'm deeply sorry for my actions."
Alinejad said she hoped President Trump would go after Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei like he did Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, who was seized in a January US military raid and brought to face drug trafficking charges in New York. "Take action. Removing terrorists is not tragedy. It's a sign of justice," Alinejad said. She added, however, that she doesn't want Iran bombed—just the removal of its leaders. She noted that US authorities have said Iran's Revolutionary Guard was responsible for not only multiple plots against her life but also a plot against Trump.
Alinejad left Iran in 2009 following the country's disputed presidential election and moved to the US, where she launched online campaigns to encourage Iranian women to pose for pictures and videos showing their hair in defiance of a religious rule requiring headscarves. An author and contributor to the Voice of America and CBS News, Alinejad became a US citizen in 2019. In court Wednesday, a prosecutor said Rivera was supposed to surveil Alinejad's planned February 2024 appearance at Fairfield University in Connecticut, an event that was canceled. Afterward, according to court papers, Rivera tried for months to surveil Alinejad at a Brooklyn home where she no longer lived.
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