NEW YORK: A Pakistani man with alleged ties to Iran is set to appear in US court on Monday on charges of scheming to assassinate an American politician in retaliation for the killing of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards top commander Qassem Soleimani.
Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn say Asif Merchant, 46, spent time in Iran before traveling to the United States to recruit people for the plot.
Merchant told a confidential informant he also planned to steal documents from one target and organize protests in the United States, prosecutors said.
The defendant named Donald Trump as a potential target but had not conceived the scheme as a plan to assassinate the former president, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Court papers do not name the alleged targets, and no attacks were made. As president, Trump had in 2020 approved the drone strike on Soleimani.
There are no suggestions that Merchant was tied to an apparent assassination attempt on Trump at his Florida golf course on Sunday, or a separate shooting of the Republican presidential candidate at a rally in Pennsylvania in July.
Merchant faces one count of attempting to commit terrorism across national boundaries and one count of murder for hire.
He is expected to enter a plea before US Magistrate Judge Robert Levy in Brooklyn at 12 p.m. EDT (1600 GMT). Merchant was arrested in Texas on July 15.
Iran’s mission to the United Nations said in August that the “modus operandi” described in Merchant’s court papers ran contrary to Tehran’s policy of “legally prosecuting the murder of General Soleimani.”

ISLAMABAD: Pakistani health authorities on Monday confirmed a sixth case of mpox virus in the federal capital of Islamabad, saying the patient was admitted to the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) hospital.

The Border Health Staff (BHS) detected mpox symptoms in a 44-year-old man during screening at the Islamabad International Airport, according to the federal health minister.

Since confirming its first mpox case last month, Pakistan has implemented stringent screening protocols at all airports and border crossings for the screening of travelers.

“The sixth case of mpox has been reported in Pakistan,” a health ministry spokesperson said in a statement. “The travel history of the 44-year-old man is from Gulf countries.”

Patients who contract mpox get flu-like symptoms and pus-filled lesions. Mpox is usually mild but can kill. Children, pregnant women and people with weakened immune systems are at higher risk of complications from the infection.

On Sept. 8, health authorities declared Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province mpox-free after all four patients previously infected with the virus recovered.

Dr. Mukhtar Bharath, the prime minister’s coordinator for health, said the health ministry was working closely with provincial authorities to monitor new cases and around 630,000 passengers had so far been screened at airports.

“Effective measures are being taken to protect people from mpox,” Dr. Bharath said.

The World Health Organization has declared a global health emergency over the spread of a new mutated strain of mpox named clade I, which first emerged in the Democratic Republic of Congo and has since spread to several countries, leading to increased monitoring and preventive measures worldwide.