State Secrets: Hiring Criminals for Targeted Killings (and more)
The intersection of state and criminal threats
Hello, Insight Monitor subscribers. A special welcome to our new members! We’re just about to hit the 6,000 subscriber milestone! I appreciate all of you who have subscribed and shared this newsletter with your friends and colleagues. Today we have an article examining the intersection of state and criminal threats. This will be a growth area for understanding foreign interference and how states advance their threat activity, so be sure to read and share to stay current on illicit activities and how they’re financed.
In recent years, the lines between organized crime and state-backed threats have increasingly blurred, particularly in cases of foreign interference. While this is not an entirely new development (the intersection of state threats and criminal elements has a long history throughout the Cold War and beyond), states are now more frequently employing criminal entities to carry out targeted killings, acts of intimidation, and other forms of interference. Iran has led the way with quite a number of assassination attempts, kidnappings, and intimidation activities against political dissidents and activists and using criminal organizations to do their dirty work. However, India has also played this game in the United States and Canada.
The Swedish intelligence agency (Säpo) recently confirmed that Iran has employed local crime rings to attack Israeli and Jewish targets, particularly Israeli embassies in Europe, following the events of October 7th. In one instance, the leader of the Foxtrot organized crime group was recruited by Iranian agents (in Iran) after fleeing Türkiye in an effort to evade international law enforcement. Iranian authorities arrested and recruited him, and had him direct his criminal organization on their behalf.
This is far from the only case of this type of activity. Read to learn more about the intersection of state and criminal threats (and their financing) and how to counter this evolving issue: