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

A new report shows that Iran is using members of the Hells Angels motorcycle gang and other criminal organizations as part of its efforts to attack and silence dissidents living in Europe and on American soil.

The dark operations, orchestrated by senior units within Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the Intelligence Ministry, have targeted a former Iranian military officer living in Maryland, an Iranian-American activist and journalist living in New York City and an exiled reporter in London, The Washington Post reported.

“We’re not dealing with the usual suspects,” Matt Jukes, head of counter-terrorism policing in the UK, told the newspaper. “What we have is a hostile state actor who sees the battlefield as an area without borders and individuals in London as legitimate targets as if they were in Iran.”

The report cites data from the Washington Institute that links Iran to 88 violent plots in the past five years, including assassination and kidnapping attempts. Officials in the United Kingdom alone have reportedly tracked more than 16 plots in the past two years.

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In one plot, Naji Sharifi Zindashti, an alleged heroin kingpin from Iran, entered into a $350,000 contract with two members of the Hells Angels motorcycle gang in Canada to murder an Iranian defector and his wife, who were living under different identities in Maryland.

The Washington Post, citing a US criminal complaint from earlier this year, reports that one of the biker gang members told the other via coded messages to “make sure I hit this guy in the head with AT LEAST half the magazine” and that “we need to remove his head from his torso.”

According to reports, US officials described the defector as a former IRGC officer who had become an informant for the CIA.

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

An indictment seen by the newspaper said the pair signed off on the plot in March 2021 and received an initial payment of $20,000 to cover travel expenses. However, the plot ultimately failed the same month that Belgian and Dutch security forces cracked the encrypted messaging service they used to communicate and arrested dozens of suspected drug traffickers in Europe, including other members of the Hells Angels, the newspaper said.

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Pearson was reportedly arrested by FBI agents in Minnesota and deported back to Canada, while Ryan was captured in Ottawa in February 2022 during a search that reportedly turned up a cache of weapons and nearly $100,000 in cash.

In another plot traced back to the Hells Angels, Iran deployed a member of the gang to blow up a synagogue in Essen, Germany, the newspaper reported.

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

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The ambush was allegedly carried out by hired criminals who then bypassed airport security and fled to Eastern Europe, where they were identified but are still at large, the newspaper reported.

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

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

Iran’s mission to the United Nations denied that the country was in any way involved in the plots, telling the newspaper: “The Islamic Republic of Iran has neither the intention nor the plan to carry out assassination or kidnapping operations, either in the West or in any other country.”