Iran using Hells Angels, criminal gangs to target critics in US and abroad: report

Iran is enlisting members of the Hells Angels biker gang and other criminal enterprises as part of their efforts to attack and silence dissidents living in Europe and on American soil, a new report has revealed. 

The shadowy operations being orchestrated by high-level units within Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its Ministry of Intelligence have targeted a former Iranian military officer living in Maryland, an Iranian-American activist and journalist based in New York City and an exiled reporter in London, according to The Washington Post. 

“We’re not dealing with the usual suspects,” Matt Jukes, who is the head of counterterrorism policing in the United Kingdom, told the newspaper. “What we’ve got is a hostile state actor that sees the battlefield as being without border and individuals in London every bit as legitimate as targets as if [they were] in Iran.” 

The report cites data from the Washington Institute linking Iran to 88 violent plots over the last five years, including assassination and abduction attempts. Officials in the U.K. reportedly have tracked more than 16 plots alone over the last two years. 

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In one of the plots, Naji Sharifi Zindashti, an alleged Iran-based heroin trafficking kingpin, worked out a $350,000 contract with two Hells Angels biker gang members in Canada to kill an Iranian defector and his wife who had been living under different identities in Maryland. 

Citing a U.S. indictment earlier this year, The Washington Post reports that one of the biker gang members told the other through encrypted messaging to “make sure I hit this guy in the head with ATLEAST half the clip,” and that “we gotta erase his head from his torso.” 

U.S. officials reportedly described the defector as a former-IRGC officer turned informant for the CIA. 

Court records identified one of the Hells Angels members as Damion Ryan, 43, who has a criminal record in Canada and has gone by the aliases of “Berserker” and “Mr. Wolf,” while the other was 29-year-old Adam Pearson, who fled Canada for Minneapolis to escape murder charges, according to The Washington Post. 

An indictment viewed by the newspaper stated the pair signed onto the plot in March 2021 and received an initial $20,000 payment to cover travel expenses. However, the plot ultimately fizzled out the same month Belgian and Dutch security forces cracked the encrypted messaging service that they were using to communicate and arrested dozens of alleged drug traffickers in Europe, including other Hells Angels members, the newspaper adds. 

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A man wears a Hells Angels jacket as he sits on his motorcycle in Berlin, Germany, in April 2014. The Washington Post, citing court documents, say the biker group has been linked to Iran’s plots targeting dissidents abroad. (Paul Zinken/picture alliance via Getty Images)

Pearson reportedly then was arrested by FBI agents in Minnesota and sent back to Canada, while Ryan was busted in Ottawa in February 2022 during a home raid that allegedly uncovered a cache of weapons and nearly $100,000 in cash. 

In another plot traced back to the Hells Angels, Iran employed a member of the gang to bomb a synagogue in Essen, Germany, the newspaper says. 

Then in March this year, exiled Iranian journalist Pouria Zeraati – who runs the London-based Iran International news channel, which is banned in Iran – was stabbed four times outside his home in the capital of the U.K., despite extensive efforts by police to protect him, The Washington Post reports. 

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An undated image of Naji Sharifi Zindashti, who the FBI says is “wanted for his alleged involvement in criminal activities including the attempted murder for hire of two residents of the state of Maryland.” (FBI)

That ambush allegedly was carried out by hired criminals who then cleared airport security checks and fled to Eastern Europe, where they have been identified but remain free, the newspaper says. 

Last year, the Justice Department also charged three men in an Iran-backed kidnapping and assassination plot against Iranian-American journalist Masih Alinejad, who was targeted in New York City for speaking out against the regime’s human rights abuses. 

A gunman who showed up at her home in Brooklyn in July 2022 was part of a Russian mob network and criminal organization called “Thieves in Law,” according to The Washington Post. 

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Iran’s mission to the United Nations denied the country having any involvement in the plots, telling the newspaper “The Islamic Republic of Iran harbors neither the intent nor the plan to engage in assassination or abduction operations, whether in the West or any other country.”