The US Federal Bureau of Investigators has charged four Iranian intelligence officers with plotting to abduct a writer/human rights activist.

All four Iranians — Alireza Shavarogi Farahani, Mahmud Hazein, Kiya Sadeghi and Omid Nouri — are charged with the plotting to abduct a Brooklyn-based reporter/writer/human rights activist who criticizes the Iranian authorities. The fifth person, Niloufar Bahadorifar, is charged with financing the alleged operation.

The name of the reporter isn’t mentioned in the court documents, but Masih Alinejad told NBC News that she was the target.

According to the Justice Department indictment, the intelligence officers had first tried in 2018 to force relatives of their kidnap target, referred to only as Victim-1, to lure her to a third country to be arrested and brought to Iran to be imprisoned.

They then moved to surveilling the victim and other members of her household in Brooklyn, New York "on multiple occasions in 2020 and 2021," the Justice Department's statement said.