The mother of the hitman, who failed to assassinate an Iranian dissident in New York City, testified on Friday in federal court during the ongoing murder-for-hire trial of two men accused of hiring her son. She held back tears in emotional testimony as she was questioned by prosecutors. But under cross-examination, the mother admitted that she helped her mobster son, at least on one occasion, conduct his criminal activities.
“He’s the one who devastated our lives,” the mother of the self-proclaimed mobster, Khalid Mehdiyev, told federal prosecutors as she pointed to one of the two defendants, Polad Omarov, who was sitting in the courtroom, and looking straight at her.
“My husband’s phone rang and I answered it because he was praying.
He (Mr. Omarov) said my name is Polad,” Ms. Mehdiyeva testified, speaking through a translator. Like her son and the two defendants on trial, she is a native of Azerbaijan, a country that borders Iran and Russia.
Mr. Omarov said, “are you the real mother of Khalid?” Ms. Mehdiyeva relayed to the jury. “He said Khalid told me his mother passed away. You must be the man’s second wife.”
Mr. Mehdiyev had testified on Thursday, as the Sun reported, that he lied to his associates in the crime organization, which he called “the Russian mob,” and to others when he told them that his mother had passed away. He explained that he lied to protect his family because “he had a lot of enemies.”
On Friday, his mother confirmed this testimony when, she said, Mr. Omarov was surprised she was alive. She was describing to the jury the moment when Mr. Omarov called her in Azerbaijan in the summer of 2022. He was looking for her son, who had been arrested and taken into custody in New York.
“He said, your son Khalid is nowhere to be found. Find me Khalid… He said I sent him to do a job for me. But your son put me in a very bad situation with other people … Because there was no one there to do it (the job). He said, ma’am, because of your bad son, your good son will be lost,” Ms. Mehdiyeva testified, indicating that Mr. Omarov was threatening to harm her other son, Mr. Mehdiyev’s brother, if she did not locate Mr. Mehdiyev immediately.
“Find me Khalid … While crying, I was begging him for more time,” Ms. Mehdiyeva said, adding that she asked Mr. Omarov for a week to find him. “He said, I cannot give you a week. I can only give you two or three days because I also have limited time … He said, even though America is big, we will look and find Khalid … I said, I will find Khalid and then we hung up the phone … At night, at 3am, I received a call from an American number.”
The American number came from Mr. Mehdiyev, who was calling his mother from the Metropolitan Detention Center, MDC, a federal jail in Brooklyn, where he was being held. He assured her he would be released in two weeks. Under cross-examination, Ms. Mehdiyeva admitted that she was aware that the calls were being recorded and was intentionally hiding names. She testified that she texted “somebody” to send money to Mr. Mehdiyev at MDC.
Mr. Mehdiyev had just been arrested, in July 2022, after law enforcement stopped his car for speeding through a stop sign, and found he was driving with a suspended license. After searching his car, officers found a suitcase containing a loaded AK-47, about 66 rounds of ammunition, as well as a ski mask and rubber gloves.
According to his own testimony, criminal complaints and the indictment, Mr. Mehdiyev had driven to Brooklyn to kill the Iranian-American journalist and book author Masih Alinejad outside of her home. But even though he spent several days parked outside of her house, even slept in his car, and went up to her porch, pondering whether to knock on her door, he missed his target. He later pleaded guilty to numerous charges, including murder-for-hire, and is now, in the hope for a lighter sentence, cooperating with federal prosecutors in the trial of the men he accuses of hiring him to carry out the hit, Mr. Omarov and Rafat Amirov.
The two Azerbaijani men, who were operating from outside America, are charged with murder-for-hire, among other severe charges. Prosecutors allege they contracted Bronx-based Mr. Mehdiyev to commit the murder of Ms. Alinejad on behalf of the Iranian government. Both men have pleaded not-guilty. The Iranian government has also denied any involvement in the assassination attempt.
Prosecutors intended to prove to the jury through Ms. Mehdiyeva’s testimony that Mr. Omarov had indeed contracted with her son.
She was brought to the United States by the FBI along with her husband and second son in 2023, “because of threats against our lives,” she testified on Friday.
Under questioning from prosecutors, the mobster’s mother held back tears several times, and appeared visibly emotional as she described how she felt when she learned her son had joined an organized crime group.
“As a mother I was devastated. I was placed in a hospital because my hopes for Khalid were broken. No matter how much I tried to speak to him… he did not change.”
But under cross-examination by an attorney from Mr. Omarov’s defense team, Michael Perkins, she admitted that on occasion she helped her son with his criminal activities.
“Eventually Khalid began discussing crimes with you?” Mr. Perkins asked.
“Yes,” Ms. Mehdiyeva replied, adding “I know very little, not too much.”
“One of his requests,” the attorney pressed, referring to Mr. Mehdiyev, “was to bribe a prison official in Azerbaijan… Did you do that? Did you bribe a prison official in Azerbaijan?”
“Yes,” Ms. Mehdiyeva replied, visibly uncomfortable.
“Did you discuss the sale of contraband phones at MDC?” The attorney asked, referring to a recorded conversation she had with Mr. Mehdiyev while he was being held at the notorious Brooklyn jail.
“I forgot,” Ms. Mehdiyeva said. The attorney could not refresh her memory even when he showed her the conversation. “I forgot,” she insisted.
The defense also exposed that Ms. Mehdiyeva, who had worked as a nanny in the US, had quit her job so she could “prepare for the trial” and still owed the family, who had paid her in advance, $4,000. The image of a heart-broken, desperate mother shifted, after the cross-examination, to a savvy woman in cahoots with her son.
It remains to be seen if the defense harmed her credibility to the degree that the jury won’t believe her testimony that Mr. Omarov told her he had hired her son “to do a job” for him, which is what prosecutors ultimately need to convict Mr. Omarov.
The prosecution then called a cyber security specialist, who works for the FBI and explained the technicalities used to track and identify the mobsters’ cellphone activities. His testimony will continue on Monday.
Ms. Alinejad is expected to testify early next week.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
