NEW YORK — An Iranian officer blamed for the 2022 killing of an American in Iraq has been charged in New York with federal murder and terrorism crimes, authorities announced on Friday.
Federal authorities in New York City said Mohammad Reza Nouri, a captain in Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, has been charged in Manhattan federal court with multiple terrorism and murder-related charges that carry a potential penalty of life in prison. At least one charge carries the potential for a death sentence.
Nouri, 36, is in custody in Iraq, where he already has been convicted by an Iraqi court for his role in Stephen Troell’s killing, authorities said.
Troell, a native of Tennessee, was killed in his car by unknown assailants as he pulled up to the street where he lived with his family in Baghdad’s central Karrada district. He worked for Global English Institute, a language school in Baghdad’s Harthiya neighborhood, which operated under the auspices of Texas-based non-governmental organization Millennium Relief and Development Services.
It was a rare killing of a foreigner in Iraq, where security conditions have improved in recent years.
Acting U.S. Attorney Edward Y. Kim said in a release that Nouri orchestrated the killing of Troell in Baghdad, Iraq, in November 2022.
“Nouri is alleged to have gathered intelligence on Troell’s daily routine and whereabouts, procured weapons and vehicles, and provided safe harbor to the operatives who carried out the sinister plot to brutally attack Troell in front of his wife,” Kim said.
The prosecutor said the “Iranian regime is actively targeting U.S. citizens, such as Troell, living in countries around the world for kidnapping and execution both to repress and silence dissidents critical of the regime and to take vengeance” for the death of Qassem Soleimani, an Iranian military leader killed by an American drone aircraft strike in January 2020.
In court papers, the U.S. government asserted that Nouri celebrated the killing with a coconspirator on the day of the attack and left Iraq for Iran the night of the killing. It said shortly before leaving Baghdad, Nouri visited a religious site associated with mourning for Soleimani’s death.
Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said in the release that the Justice Department “will not tolerate terrorists and authoritarian regimes targeting and murdering Americans anywhere in the world.”
Last month, the Justice Department disclosed an Iranian murder-for-hire plot to kill President-elect Donald Trump, saying a man had been tasked by an Iranian government official before the election with planning the assassination of the Republican president-elect.
Esmail Baghaei, an Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson in Tehran, rejected the report, calling it a plot by Israel-linked circles to make Iran-U.S. relations more complicated, the official IRNA news agency reported.
Similar accusations in the past were rejected by Iran as their “erroneousness” was proved, he said.