Asif Merchant testifies in court, alleging duress from Iran's IRGC in murder scheme.
Pakistani man says Iran forced him into plot to kill Trump
A Pakistani man accused of planning to kill US President Donald Trump reportedly told jurors today that he did not willingly work with Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) to devise the plot.
The Justice Department accused Asif Merchant of trying to recruit people in the United States in the plan targeting Trump and other US politicians in retaliation for Washington’s killing of the Corps’ top commander, Qassem Soleimani.
The Corps has a central role in Iran, with its combination of military and economic power and an intelligence network.
“I was not wanting to do this so willingly,” the New York Times quoted Merchant as telling a court during his trial for terrorism and murder-for-hire charges, adding that he participated to protect his family in Tehran.
Prosecutors rejected Merchant’s claim, citing a “lack of evidentiary support for a true duress or coercion,” according to a letter sent yesterday to the judge in the case dating from 2024.
Merchant reportedly said he had never been ordered to kill a specific person but that his Iranian handler named three people in the course of conversations in the Iranian capital.
In addition to Trump, these were Joe Biden, the president at the time; and Nikki Haley, who unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination for the 2024 presidential election.
The trial started last week, days before Trump ordered strikes on Iran carried out with Israel that killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and top officials in the Middle Eastern nation.
Trump cited an alleged Iranian plot when he spoke to ABC News on Sunday about the joint US-Israeli operation that killed Khamenei, saying, “I got him before he got me.”
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