Islamabad awaits details on citizen held in US

ISLAMABAD:

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Wednesday said that they were in contact with the US authorities and awaiting further details regarding the alleged involvement of a Pakistani national in connection with an assassination plot in the United States.

"We have seen the media reports. We are in touch with the US authorities and await further details. We have also noted the statements by US officials that this is an ongoing investigation," Foreign Office spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch said in a statement.

In response to the media queries, she also stated that before giving any formal reaction, the government also needed to be sure of the antecedents of the individual in question.

Meanwhile, the man with ties to Iran has been arrested for allegedly plotting to assassinate a US official in retaliation for the US killing of Revolutionary Guards commander Qassem Soleimani, the Justice Department said Tuesday.

Asif Raza Merchant, 46, allegedly sought to hire a hitman to assassinate a politician or a US government official in the United States, the department said in a statement.

"For years, the Justice Department has been working aggressively to counter Iran's brazen and unrelenting efforts to retaliate against American public officials for the killing of Iranian General Soleimani," Attorney General Merrick Garland said.

Soleimani, the head of Iran's foreign military operations, was killed in a US drone strike in Baghdad in January 2020. Iranian officials have repeatedly vowed to avenge his killing.

"The Justice Department will spare no resource to disrupt and hold accountable those who would seek to carry out Iran's lethal plotting against American citizens," Garland said.

The intended victim was not identified but the attorney general said no evidence has emerged to link Merchant with the July 13 assassination attempt against former president Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania.

FBI Director Christopher Wary said the Pakistani national had "close ties to Iran" and that the alleged murder-for-hire plot was "straight out of the Iranian playbook".

Another FBI official said the assassins Merchant allegedly tried to hire were in fact undercover FBI agents. Merchant was arrested on July 12 as he planned to leave the country.

Iran's mission to the United Nations said it had "not received any report on this from the American government".

"But it is clear that this method is contrary to the Iranian government's policy of pursuing Soleimani's killer," the mission said in a statement carried by Iran's official IRNA news agency.

In August 2022, the United States charged a member of the Revolutionary Guards with plotting to assassinate former US National Security Advisor John Bolton.

The Justice Department said Shahram Poursafi, who remains at large, had offered to pay an individual in the United States $300,000 to kill Bolton.

Iran has dismissed the claim that it had plotted to kill Bolton as "fiction."

Moreover, an official from the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has denied CNN's report about Asif Merchant, a Pakistani man alleged to have ties to the Iranian government and accused of planning political assassinations in the United States.

CNN, citing unsealed court documents from the Justice Department, reported that Merchant had been charged in a case that led the US government to heighten security for former President Donald Trump and other officials.

However, in the same report, CNN quoted an FBI official stating that investigators had not found any evidence linking Merchant to the shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania.

FBI investigators suspect that Trump and other current and former US government officials were the intended targets of the plot, according to a US official familiar with the matter.

The White House also stated that no evidence has been found against Asif Merchant, and the investigation is ongoing as the accused remains in federal custody.

 

With additional input from News Desk