BERLIN — In the middle of a Berlin hotel café, Masih Alinejad raises her voice and begins singing at the top of her lungs in Farsi, as waiters turn to watch with the three German government bodyguards assigned to protect her.

“I thrive through my wounds and my scars,” she translates the lyrics. “Because I am a woman. I am a woman. I am a woman.

Alinejad was expressing her defiance and asserting her right to speak out following news of Iranian murder-for-hire plots to kill her and Donald Trump, revealed by the US Department of Justice. She said some Iranian women had been imprisoned for singing.

The Iranian-American human rights activist, who was in Berlin on Saturday to mark the 35th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall with other human rights activists from around the world, told The Associated Press in an interview that despite The shock of the news made her feel more determined than ever to continue fighting for women’s rights in Iran.

“They want to get rid of me. When they want me dead, that means I’m doing something. I hurt them so much,” said Alinejad, 48, referring to the Iranian government. “I echo the voices of powerful women and it scares them.”

She raised her hand in a defiant fist several times during the interview.

On Friday, the U.S. Department of Justice announced it was indicting a man who claimed he was instructed by a government official before this week’s election to plan Trump’s assassination.

Investigators were briefed on the plan by Farhad Shakeri, an accused Iranian government agent who spent time in U.S. prisons on theft charges and who authorities say maintained a network of criminal associates enlisted by Tehran for surveillance plots and murder for hire.

Shakeri is at large and remains in Iran. Two other men – identified as Jonathan Loadholt and Carlisle Rivera by the US Department of Justice – were arrested on charges that Shakeri recruited them to follow and kill Alinejad, who was the victim of several foiled Iranian murder-for-hire plots by law enforcement.

The Justice Department alleges that the two men spent months monitoring her and, during their efforts to locate and kill her, shared messages about their progress and photographs.

Around February, they traveled to Fairfield University in Connecticut, where Alinejad was scheduled to appear and take photos of the campus.

Around April, Shakeri sent Rivera a series of voice notes discussing their efforts to locate and kill her, the Justice Department said in a statement Friday.

In a voice note, Shakeri told Rivera that “you have to wait and have patience to catch her either entering the house, leaving, or following her somewhere and taking care of her.” , indicates the press release.

“It’s scary. But at the same time, I was very happy that American law enforcement was protecting me,” Alinejad said, recounting her call with American security officials.

“The same person who was trying to kill President Trump was also on a mission to kill me. I mean, it’s a badge of honor,” she added.

In Tehran, Esmail Baghaei, a spokesperson for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, rejected the report, calling it a plot by Israeli-linked circles aimed at complicating relations between Iran and the United States, reported official news agency IRNA.

Alinejad is a prominent figure in overseas Farsi-language satellite channels that look critically at Iran, and she has worked since 2015 as a contractor for Voice of America’s state-funded Farsi-language network. -United. She fled Iran after the disputed 2009 presidential election and became a US citizen in October 2019.

Alinejad accused the Iranian government of continuing to oppress women in Iran and making them wear the obligatory headscarf, or hijab, even two years after the death of Mahsa Amini that sparked mass protests that lasted for weeks.

The fact that the Iranian government repeatedly tried to kill her, she said, “makes me more determined to give voice to powerful women in Iran who face the same assassins every day.”