DEFENDING
DEMOCRACY IN EXILE
Policy Responses to
Transnational Repression
Unsafe in America:
Transnational Repression in the United States
I
n July 2021, the Department of Justice revealed a kidnapping plot against
Masih Alinejad, an Iranian journalist and women’s rights activist who has lived
in the United States since 2009. According to the criminal indictment, agents of
the Iranian government hired a private investigator to track her and her family’s
movements in New York. They researched ways to abduct her, including hiring
a high-speed boat that could transport her from the Brooklyn waterfront to
Venezuela, and then on to Iran.1 Iranian authorities had already forced Alinejad’s
sister to denounce her on state television in Iran and imprisoned her brother.2
They also tried to pressure her family into convincing her to come to Turkey
in an effort to set a trap for her. When the threats from afar, pressure on her
family, and schemes to lure her to a third country did not work, Iran hired a
private investigator to watch Alinejad. Just a year prior, the Iranian regime had
successfully lured another journalist, Ruhollah Zam, into traveling from France
to Iraq, from where he was kidnapped, returned to Iran, and executed.3
A Tibetan monk
participates in a
demonstration in front
of the White House in
Washington, DC, on
February 13, 2012. Photo
credit: Jewel Samad/AFP
via Getty Images.