New York
Murder and terrorism charges brought against Iranian officer in 2022 killing of American in Iraq
NEW YORK (AP) — 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.
Washington
An ex-police officer is convicted of lying about leaks to the Proud Boys leader
WASHINGTON (AP) — A retired police officer in the nation’s capital was convicted Monday of lying to authorities about leaking confidential information to the leader of the Proud Boys extremist group.
U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson convicted former Metropolitan Police Department Lt. Shane Lamond of obstructing justice and making false statements after a trial without a jury.
Sentencing was scheduled for April 3 after Lamond’s conviction on all four counts.
Lamond was charged with leaking information to former Proud Boys national chairman Enrique Tarrio, who was then under investigation in the burning of a Black Lives Matter banner.
Tarrio eventually pleaded guilty to burning the banner stolen from a historic Black church in downtown Washington in December 2020.
He was later sentenced to 22 years in prison for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, part of what prosecutors called a plot to use force keep Donald Trump in the White House after the 2020 election.
Lamond, who met Tarrio in 2019, had supervised the intelligence branch of the police department’s Homeland Security Bureau. He was responsible for monitoring groups like the Proud Boys when they came to Washington.
Tarrio was arrested in Washington two days before the Jan. 6 siege. The Miami resident wasn’t at the Capitol when a mob of Trump supporters stormed the building and interrupted the congressional certification of Biden’s 2020 electoral victory.
Lamond testified at his bench trial that he never provided Tarrio with sensitive police information. Tarrio, who testified as a witness for Lamond’s defense, said he didn’t confess to Lamond about burning the banner and didn’t receive any confidential information from him.
But prosecutors said the trial evidence proved Lamond tipped off Tarrio that a warrant for his arrest had been signed.
“Similarly, the defendant affirmatively advised Mr. Tarrio in a written message that he was being asked to identify him for a warrant, a warning obviously in contemplation of the subsequent prosecution and with obvious ramifications for it,” prosecutors wrote.
Lamond’s indictment says he and Tarrio exchanged messages about the Jan. 6 riot and discussed whether Proud Boys members were in danger of being charged in the attack.
“Of course I can’t say it officially, but personally I support you all and don’t want to see your group’s name and reputation dragged through the mud,” Lamond wrote.
Lamond said he was upset that a prosecutor labeled him as a Proud Boys “sympathizer” who acted as a “double agent” for the group after Tarrio burned a stolen Black Lives Matter banner in December 2020.
“I don’t support the Proud Boys, and I’m not a Proud Boys sympathizer,” Lamond testified.
Lamond said he considered Tarrio to be a source, not a friend. But he said he tried to build a friendly rapport with the group leader to gain his trust.
Justice Department prosecutor Joshua Rothstein pointed to messages that suggest Lamond provided Tarrio with “real-time updates” on the police investigation of the Dec. 12, 2020, banner burning.
Lamond, 48, of Colonial Beach, Virginia, was charged with one count of obstruction of justice and three counts of making false statements. He retired in May 2023 after 23 years of service to the police department.
Utah
Homeland Security agent pleads not guilty to drug distribution conspiracy charge
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — A Department of Homeland Security agent who the FBI says conspired with another agent to sell an illicit drug known as “bath salts” pleaded not guilty to a drug distribution conspiracy charge Friday in federal court.
A grand jury in Salt Lake City brought the criminal charge against Special Agent David Cole of the Homeland Security Investigations unit earlier this week. The indictment alleges that Cole abused his position as a federal law enforcement agent to obtain and sell drugs for profit. If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.
Cole took drugs that had been seized as evidence, telling colleagues he was using them for legitimate investigations, and instead sold them to a confidential informant who resold the drugs for profit on the streets of Utah, according to the indictment.
The informant, who has a lengthy criminal history, had been recruited by federal agents to work for them upon his release from prison. But in addition to conducting controlled buys from suspected drug dealers as directed by investigators, the informant said he was compelled by Cole and another agent to also engage in illegal sales.
The investigation began after the informant’s defense attorney contacted the U.S. Attorney in Utah in October to report that agents had required him to engage in potentially illegal acts dating from last spring to early December. Details of drug sales offered by the informant were confirmed through surveillance and other sources, the FBI said.
Cole and the second agent — identified in court documents only as “Person A” — profited up to $300,000 from the illegal scheme, according to an FBI affidavit filed in the case.
FBI spokesperson Sandra Barker said Friday that “Person A” had not been arrested or charged, but the investigation was ongoing.
Cole, 50, of South Jordan, Utah, entered the courtroom Friday handcuffed and hunched over, wearing a white and gray, striped jumpsuit. U.S. Magistrate Judge Dustin Pead accepted Cole’s not guilty plea and scheduled a trial for the week of Feb. 24.
Federal officials say Cole’s indictment sends a message that officers who break the law and undermine the public’s trust in law enforcement will be prosecuted.
“A drug dealer who carries a badge is still a drug dealer — and one who has violated an oath to uphold the law and protect the public,” said Nicole Argentieri, head of the U.S. Justice Department’s Criminal Division. “No one is above the law.”
Special Agent Shohini Sinha, who leads the FBI’s Salt Lake City field office, said Cole’s alleged actions helped fuel an already devastating drug crisis.
Ingestion of synthetic bath salts, also known as Alpha-PVP or cathinone, can lead to bizarre behavior such as paranoia and extreme strength, according to authorities who say it’s similar to methamphetamine, cocaine or ecstasy. They are unrelated to actual bathing products.
Cole’s attorney, Alexander Ramos, has declined to directly address the criminal allegations but said his client has a strong reputation within the federal law enforcement community. Ramos did not immediately respond Friday to emails seeking comment on the not guilty plea.
The Homeland Security Investigations department where Cole worked conducts federal criminal investigations into the illegal movement of people, goods, money, weapons, drugs and sensitive technology into, out of and across the U.S. Cole and the second agent had their credentials suspended but have not been fired, according to court documents.
Louisiana
State often holds inmates past their release date, DOJ lawsuit claims
Louisiana’s prison system routinely holds people weeks and months after they have completed their sentences, the U.S. Department of Justice alleged in a lawsuit filed Friday. The suit against the state of Louisiana follows a multiyear investigation into what federal officials say is a pattern of “systemic overdetention” that violates inmates’ rights and costs taxpayers millions of dollars a year.
DOJ alleges that since at least 2012, more than a quarter of the people due to be released from Louisiana prisons have instead been held past their release dates. DOJ warned Louisiana officials last year that the state could face a lawsuit if it didn’t fix the problems, but lawyers for the department say the state’s “marginal efforts” to address the issues were “inadequate” and showed a “deliberate indifference” to the constitutional rights of incarcerated individuals.
“(T)he right to individual liberty includes the right to be released from incarceration on time after the term set by the court has ended,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke said in a statement announcing the suit.
“To incarcerate people indefinitely ... not only intrudes on individual liberty, but also erodes public confidence in the fair and just application of our laws.”
In a joint statement provided to The Associated Press, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry and state Attorney General Liz Murrill blamed the problem on the “failed criminal justice reforms” advanced by “the past administration.”
Advocates have repeatedly challenged the conditions in Louisiana’s prison system, which includes the country’s largest maximum-security prison, known as Angola, where incarcerated individuals toil under the sun picking vegetables by hand at what was once a slave plantation.
Murder and terrorism charges brought against Iranian officer in 2022 killing of American in Iraq
NEW YORK (AP) — 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.
Washington
An ex-police officer is convicted of lying about leaks to the Proud Boys leader
WASHINGTON (AP) — A retired police officer in the nation’s capital was convicted Monday of lying to authorities about leaking confidential information to the leader of the Proud Boys extremist group.
U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson convicted former Metropolitan Police Department Lt. Shane Lamond of obstructing justice and making false statements after a trial without a jury.
Sentencing was scheduled for April 3 after Lamond’s conviction on all four counts.
Lamond was charged with leaking information to former Proud Boys national chairman Enrique Tarrio, who was then under investigation in the burning of a Black Lives Matter banner.
Tarrio eventually pleaded guilty to burning the banner stolen from a historic Black church in downtown Washington in December 2020.
He was later sentenced to 22 years in prison for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, part of what prosecutors called a plot to use force keep Donald Trump in the White House after the 2020 election.
Lamond, who met Tarrio in 2019, had supervised the intelligence branch of the police department’s Homeland Security Bureau. He was responsible for monitoring groups like the Proud Boys when they came to Washington.
Tarrio was arrested in Washington two days before the Jan. 6 siege. The Miami resident wasn’t at the Capitol when a mob of Trump supporters stormed the building and interrupted the congressional certification of Biden’s 2020 electoral victory.
Lamond testified at his bench trial that he never provided Tarrio with sensitive police information. Tarrio, who testified as a witness for Lamond’s defense, said he didn’t confess to Lamond about burning the banner and didn’t receive any confidential information from him.
But prosecutors said the trial evidence proved Lamond tipped off Tarrio that a warrant for his arrest had been signed.
“Similarly, the defendant affirmatively advised Mr. Tarrio in a written message that he was being asked to identify him for a warrant, a warning obviously in contemplation of the subsequent prosecution and with obvious ramifications for it,” prosecutors wrote.
Lamond’s indictment says he and Tarrio exchanged messages about the Jan. 6 riot and discussed whether Proud Boys members were in danger of being charged in the attack.
“Of course I can’t say it officially, but personally I support you all and don’t want to see your group’s name and reputation dragged through the mud,” Lamond wrote.
Lamond said he was upset that a prosecutor labeled him as a Proud Boys “sympathizer” who acted as a “double agent” for the group after Tarrio burned a stolen Black Lives Matter banner in December 2020.
“I don’t support the Proud Boys, and I’m not a Proud Boys sympathizer,” Lamond testified.
Lamond said he considered Tarrio to be a source, not a friend. But he said he tried to build a friendly rapport with the group leader to gain his trust.
Justice Department prosecutor Joshua Rothstein pointed to messages that suggest Lamond provided Tarrio with “real-time updates” on the police investigation of the Dec. 12, 2020, banner burning.
Lamond, 48, of Colonial Beach, Virginia, was charged with one count of obstruction of justice and three counts of making false statements. He retired in May 2023 after 23 years of service to the police department.
Utah
Homeland Security agent pleads not guilty to drug distribution conspiracy charge
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — A Department of Homeland Security agent who the FBI says conspired with another agent to sell an illicit drug known as “bath salts” pleaded not guilty to a drug distribution conspiracy charge Friday in federal court.
A grand jury in Salt Lake City brought the criminal charge against Special Agent David Cole of the Homeland Security Investigations unit earlier this week. The indictment alleges that Cole abused his position as a federal law enforcement agent to obtain and sell drugs for profit. If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.
Cole took drugs that had been seized as evidence, telling colleagues he was using them for legitimate investigations, and instead sold them to a confidential informant who resold the drugs for profit on the streets of Utah, according to the indictment.
The informant, who has a lengthy criminal history, had been recruited by federal agents to work for them upon his release from prison. But in addition to conducting controlled buys from suspected drug dealers as directed by investigators, the informant said he was compelled by Cole and another agent to also engage in illegal sales.
The investigation began after the informant’s defense attorney contacted the U.S. Attorney in Utah in October to report that agents had required him to engage in potentially illegal acts dating from last spring to early December. Details of drug sales offered by the informant were confirmed through surveillance and other sources, the FBI said.
Cole and the second agent — identified in court documents only as “Person A” — profited up to $300,000 from the illegal scheme, according to an FBI affidavit filed in the case.
FBI spokesperson Sandra Barker said Friday that “Person A” had not been arrested or charged, but the investigation was ongoing.
Cole, 50, of South Jordan, Utah, entered the courtroom Friday handcuffed and hunched over, wearing a white and gray, striped jumpsuit. U.S. Magistrate Judge Dustin Pead accepted Cole’s not guilty plea and scheduled a trial for the week of Feb. 24.
Federal officials say Cole’s indictment sends a message that officers who break the law and undermine the public’s trust in law enforcement will be prosecuted.
“A drug dealer who carries a badge is still a drug dealer — and one who has violated an oath to uphold the law and protect the public,” said Nicole Argentieri, head of the U.S. Justice Department’s Criminal Division. “No one is above the law.”
Special Agent Shohini Sinha, who leads the FBI’s Salt Lake City field office, said Cole’s alleged actions helped fuel an already devastating drug crisis.
Ingestion of synthetic bath salts, also known as Alpha-PVP or cathinone, can lead to bizarre behavior such as paranoia and extreme strength, according to authorities who say it’s similar to methamphetamine, cocaine or ecstasy. They are unrelated to actual bathing products.
Cole’s attorney, Alexander Ramos, has declined to directly address the criminal allegations but said his client has a strong reputation within the federal law enforcement community. Ramos did not immediately respond Friday to emails seeking comment on the not guilty plea.
The Homeland Security Investigations department where Cole worked conducts federal criminal investigations into the illegal movement of people, goods, money, weapons, drugs and sensitive technology into, out of and across the U.S. Cole and the second agent had their credentials suspended but have not been fired, according to court documents.
Louisiana
State often holds inmates past their release date, DOJ lawsuit claims
Louisiana’s prison system routinely holds people weeks and months after they have completed their sentences, the U.S. Department of Justice alleged in a lawsuit filed Friday. The suit against the state of Louisiana follows a multiyear investigation into what federal officials say is a pattern of “systemic overdetention” that violates inmates’ rights and costs taxpayers millions of dollars a year.
DOJ alleges that since at least 2012, more than a quarter of the people due to be released from Louisiana prisons have instead been held past their release dates. DOJ warned Louisiana officials last year that the state could face a lawsuit if it didn’t fix the problems, but lawyers for the department say the state’s “marginal efforts” to address the issues were “inadequate” and showed a “deliberate indifference” to the constitutional rights of incarcerated individuals.
“(T)he right to individual liberty includes the right to be released from incarceration on time after the term set by the court has ended,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke said in a statement announcing the suit.
“To incarcerate people indefinitely ... not only intrudes on individual liberty, but also erodes public confidence in the fair and just application of our laws.”
In a joint statement provided to The Associated Press, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry and state Attorney General Liz Murrill blamed the problem on the “failed criminal justice reforms” advanced by “the past administration.”
Advocates have repeatedly challenged the conditions in Louisiana’s prison system, which includes the country’s largest maximum-security prison, known as Angola, where incarcerated individuals toil under the sun picking vegetables by hand at what was once a slave plantation.
