Two Canadian men charged in alleged Iranian ‘murder-for-hire’ plot

Two Canadian men have been accused of attempting to facilitate an assassination plot in Maryland, allegedly at the behest of an agent of the Iranian regime.

Two Canadian men have been charged in what U.S. authorities are calling a “murder-for-hire scheme” allegedly coordinated in Iran.

The U.S. Department of Justice revealed Monday that the two men, 43-year-old Damion Patrick John Ryan and 29-year old Adam Richard Pearson, allegedly conspired with an Iranian national, Naji Sharifi Zindashti, to murder two people in Maryland.

The alleged conspiracy took place between December 2020 and March 2021, the Justice department said.

“As alleged, Mr. Zindashti and his team of gunmen, including a Minnesota resident, used an encrypted messaging service to orchestrate an assassination plot against two individuals,” said Andrew Luger, the U.S. attorney for the District of Minnesota, in a press release.

Both Ryan and Pearson are currently in jail in Canada on unrelated charges, American authorities said. Zindashti remains in Iran.

According to U.S. authorities, Zindashti ran a criminal network that “targets Iranian dissidents and opposition activists for kidnapping and assassination at the direction of the Iranian regime.” The U.S. has barred Zindashti and “several of his key associates” from transactions or deals involving American people or that take place in that country.

The U.S. Department of the Treasury, in a separate release Monday, accused Zindashti of being a narcotics trafficker who ran a network of repression and assassination “at the behest of Iran’s Minitry of Intelligence and Security … across multiple jurisdictions in an attempt to silence the Iranian regime’s perceived critics.”

According to U.S. officials, those efforts have ramped up in recent years.