Houston Man Sentenced to 25 Years in Saudi Ambassador Murder Plot
Published at
Brand X Pictures/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) — A judge in a New York federal court on Thursday gave the harshest prison sentence possible — 25 years — to Mansour Arbabsiar, who was found guilty of the 2011 plot to assassinate Adel al-Jubeir, the Saudi Arabian ambassador to Washington.
Arbabsiar, an Iranian-American used-car salesman from Corpus Christi, Texas, pleaded guilty last October to conspiracy to commit an act of terrorism transcending national boundaries and two counts related to murder-for-hire. He avoided a possible life sentence by taking the deal offered by prosecutors.
When announcing the original indictment two years ago, Attorney General Eric Holder said the elaborate plot not only involved assassinating the Saudi ambassador in a D.C. restaurant but bombing the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., and the Saudi and Israeli Embassies in Argentina.
At the time, Holder said, “The United States is committed to holding Iran accountable for its actions,” alleging that Iran was behind the plot to kill the Saudi envoy based on information from Arbabsiar that he was recruited by the Quds Forces, an arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.
The Iranian government has denied any involvement in the scheme.
According to law enforcement officials, Arbabsiar arranged to have al-Jubeir killed after meeting with someone he thought was a member of the Mexican drug cartel Los Zetas, who turned out be a Drug Enforcement Agency informant.
Arbabsiar said he wanted four men to carry out the plot and was willing to pay $1.5 million, $100,000 of which he wired to an account the FBI was secretly overseeing, according to the bureau.
Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio