Comment A man has been arrested after he was found with a rifle outside the Brooklyn home of an Iranian-American journalist who was previously the target of a brazen kidnapping plot by Iranian intelligence agents, according to court documents and the reporter. Masih Alinejad, an exiled journalist and women’s rights activist living in New York, has long been a critic of the regime in Tehran. Last year, four Iranians were charged with conspiring to kidnap her and transport her to the Middle Eastern country, possibly via a daring sea mission. (Iranian officials at the time dismissed the claims as “baseless.”) Iranian intelligence agents planned brazen kidnapping of dissident Brooklyn journalist, US prosecutors say Alinejad was not identified by prosecutors, but on Sunday, she said she was the intended target in last week’s incident – posting a video on Twitter that she said showed the man outside her home. The video, in which the gun was not visible, appeared to have been captured by a doorbell camera. “Last year the FBI stopped the Islamic Republic from kidnapping me. My crime is giving voice to voiceless people. The US government must be tough on terror,” he tweeted. According to a criminal complaint filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan on Friday, the suspect, Khalid Mehdiyev, was spotted by law enforcement officials near a home in Brooklyn on Wednesday and Thursday. He “behaved suspiciously” during that time, the complaint states, getting in and out of a gray Subaru Forester SUV multiple times, ordering food in the vehicle and appearing to try to look into the home’s windows. NYPD officers arrested him nearby Thursday afternoon after he failed to stop at a stop sign and was found to be driving without a license. During a subsequent search of the vehicle, investigators found a loaded AK-47 assault rifle in a suitcase in the back seat, the court document shows, along with Mehdiyev’s identification showing a residential address in Yonkers. The rifle’s serial number appeared to have been destroyed, but markings indicated it was manufactured by Norinco, a Chinese state-owned firearms and military supplies company. The suitcase also contained $1,100 in hundred dollar bills, investigators say. According to the criminal complaint, Mehdiyev initially said he did not know about a gun and that the suitcase was not his. He told investigators he had borrowed the vehicle and had put his wallet and other personal items in the front pocket of the suitcase for “safekeeping.” During an interview with law enforcement officials, he said he was in Brooklyn looking for a place to live and that he tried to open the door to the residence to knock on an interior door to ask if the residents would rent him a room. He told investigators he changed his mind because he thought he might wake a sleeping or sick passenger, the court document said. But later, the complaint said, he called investigators back and told them the rifle was his and that he was in Brooklyn looking for someone. Mehdiyev was charged with possession of a firearm with a defaced serial number and held without bail. His attorney, Stephanie Carvlin, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Sunday night. Several exiled Iranian dissidents have disappeared under mysterious circumstances in recent years, though threats like the one Alinejad allegedly faces on American soil are particularly rare. Alinejad, a longtime critic of the theocratic government in Tehran, received a human rights award in Geneva in 2015 for creating a Facebook page that invited women in Iran, where hijabs are mandatory, to post photos of themselves without their headscarves. He is a prominent figure on Farsi satellite channels abroad that are critical of Iran. Last month, she wrote in a column for the Washington Post that Instagram restricted her account after a video she shared, which was critical of the Iranian government, went viral. it was viewed 2.8 million times on Instagram and more than 1 million times on Twitter. An Instagram spokesperson said at the time that the restriction was put “in error due to a technical issue”. Alinejad tweeted on Sunday that she was “shocked to learn that a killer with a loaded AK-47 came to my house in Brooklyn.” He added: “I am grateful to the federal agents, but the government must do more to protect the citizens of the United States.”