KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (WVLT) – A 36-year-old Iranian man has been charged in the 2022 murder of a Knoxville man who was working abroad at an English language institute.
Court documents unsealed on Friday outline what the federal government believes happened leading up to Stephen Troell’s death in Baghdad, Iraq.
According to the documents, Mohammad Reza Nouri orchestrated Troell’s murder in retaliation for the U.S.‘s killing of Qasim Soleimani, the then-commander of the IRGC-Qods Force (IRGC-QF) in January of 2020.
Nouri also goes by several other names — Muhammad Rida Husayn, Ali Asghar Nuri and Abu Abbas — and is an Iranian national officer in the IRCG, the documents said. He is accused of organizing a hit on Troell by gathering information on his day-to-day life in Baghdad.
That information included things like Troell’s schedule, where he was living, job, phone number and family information, the court documents said. Nouri is also accused of using that information to outline the plan other Iranian operatives followed to kill Troell.
As for what those operatives did, the documents accuse them of stopping Troell on his way home in 2022, blocking any escape and shooting him with an assault rifle. Troell’s wife was in the car at the time, the documents said.
The federal government is also accusing Nouri of acting as part of a wider conspiracy to target Americans abroad in retaliation for Soleimani’s death. Soleimani was killed in a U.S. drone strike.
“The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps remains determined to target U.S. citizens, and orchestrated a cold-blooded plot to brutally murder Stephen Troell, a Tennessee native working at an English language institute in Iraq,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said. “According to the allegations, Mohammad Reza Nouri, an IRGC captain, played a key role in planning the attack in which Troell was ambushed as he drove home from work with his wife.”
As of now, Nouri is in custody in Iraq. He was arrested in March of 2023 and convicted by an Iraqi court for his role in Treoll’s death. The Iranian man is now facing charges from the U.S. for conspiring to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization resulting in death, and several other charges, and could face death or life in prison if convicted. A federal district court judge will determine the sentence after looking at U.S. Sentencing Guidelines.
Assistant U.S. attorneys out of New York are prosecuting the case, using the information, which was gathered by The Justice Department’s Office of International Affairs, Justice Department’s Attaché in Iraq, FBI Legal Attaché office in Iraq, Iraqi authorities and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia.
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