A Pakistani man with alleged ties to Iran pleaded not guilty on Monday to charges stemming from an alleged plot to assassinate an American politician in retaliation for the killing of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards top commander Qassem Soleimani.

Asif Merchant, 46, entered his plea to one count of attempting to commit terrorism across national boundaries and one count of murder for hire at a hearing before U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert Levy in Brooklyn.

The judge ordered that Merchant be detained pending trial.

Federal prosecutors say Merchant spent time in Iran before traveling to the United States to recruit people for the plot.

Merchant told a confidential informant he also planned to steal documents from one target and organize protests in the United States, prosecutors said.

The defendant named Donald Trump as a potential target but had not conceived the scheme as a plan to assassinate the former president, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Court papers do not name the alleged targets, and no attacks were made. As president, Trump had in 2020 approved the drone strike on Soleimani.

There are no suggestions that Merchant was tied to an apparent assassination attempt on Trump at his Florida golf course on Sunday, or a separate shooting of the Republican presidential candidate at a rally in Pennsylvania in July.

Merchant wore an olive-colored prison T-shirt on top of an orange undershirt to his hearing, and sported a salt-and-pepper beard.

He is being held at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center, following his July 15 arrest in Texas.

Defense lawyer Avraham Moskowitz objected at the hearing to the jail conditions.

He said Merchant was being held in isolation, had been allowed out for exercise only once in two months, and had lost 15 to 20 pounds (6.8 to 9.1 kg) because jail officials would not serve a halal diet appropriate for a Shi’ite Muslim.

“It is literally torture,” Moskowitz said.

Prosecutor Sara Winik said she would speak with the Bureau of Prisons to ensure Merchant received an adequate diet.

The bureau did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Iran’s mission to the United Nations said in August that the “modus operandi” described in Merchant’s court papers ran contrary to Tehran’s policy of “legally prosecuting the murder of General Soleimani.”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

New Delhi:

The US has charged a Pakistani man, who allegedly has ties to Iran, with attempting to carry out assassinations of American politicians.

Federal prosecutors said Asif Merchant, 46, orchestrated a plot to kill an unidentified politician or US government officials on American soil.

This case has led the US government to increase security for former US President Donald Trump and other officials. While the criminal complaint does not mention Trump explicitly, multiple sources have told reporters that one of the intended targets of the alleged plot was Trump.

Who Is Asif Merchant

Asif Merchant, also known as “Asif Raza Merchant”, is a 46-year-old Pakistani national. He has two wives, one each in Pakistan and in Iran, as well as children in both countries.

According to his travel records, Asif frequently travels to Iran, Syria and Iraq, the US Justice Department said.

How Asif plotted

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.

Asif 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, who informed officials, Merchant told him he had an uncle in the “yarn-dyed” business in Pakistan and he could go into business with them.

For his plans, Asif Merchant hired people he thought were hitmen, but who were actually undercover agents. He asked one government source he believed was an assassin for hire to explain how “the target” would die in different scenarios.

How his plot failed

Asif Merchant’s plot failed because he tried to recruit FBI agents for the assassination attempt.

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

In mid-June, Merchant met with people he thought were hitmen. They 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 they would be told who the target was either in the last week of August or the first week of September, Merchant told the undercover officers.

Merchant arranged to pay USD 5,000 in cash as an advance for the assassination services and successfully delivered this payment on June 21.

Following this transaction, he made plans to leave the country on July 12, 2024, one day before Donald Trump’s assassination attempt. However, law enforcement intervened and arrested him before he could leave, the court document said.