More Details About Iranian Cousins Accused in Assassination Plot

Reported by: Farrah Fazal
Reported by: Jordan Williams
Last Update: 5:54 pm

Federal officials say an assassination attempt on a Saudi ambassador in the United States was planned right here in South Texas and in Reynosa.

Two cousins, Manssor Arbabsiar and Gholam Shakuri, and a group of Iranians came up with a plan to kill Saudi ambassador Adel al Jubair. One of them met a DEA informant in Reynosa.

We started digging into Arbabsiar's background and here's what we found out. He has dual citizenship; he is an American and an Iranian. He has a Texas driver's license and lives in Round Rock. His roommate may be a man from Mexico.

Federal prosecutors say Arbabsiar met twice in July with a DEA informant in Reynosa. He thought the informant was a Zeta Cartel member. Investigators say he negotiated a $1.5 million payment for the assassination of the Saudi ambassador. He didn't know he was putting the money in an FBI undercover bank account.

“This case illustrates we live in a world where borders and boundaries are increasingly irrelevant, a world where individuals from one country sought to conspire with a drug cartel in another country to assassinate a foreign official on U.S. soil. And though it reads like a Hollywood script, the impact would have been very real and many lives would have been lost,â€