LOS ANGELES (AP) — Federal prosecutors mentioned a 44-year-old Los Angeles lady was arrested Saturday evening at Los Angeles Worldwide Airport on suspicion of serving to Iran visitors weapons to Sudan, which is in its fourth yr of a bloody civil war.
Shamim Mafi will face expenses that she brokered the sale of “drones, bombs, bomb fuses, and hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition” between Iran and the Sudanese Armed Forces, First U.S. Legal professional Invoice Essayli mentioned Sunday on social media.
A cellphone quantity for Mafi couldn’t be situated and it wasn’t identified Sunday if she has an lawyer who might communicate on her behalf.
Essayli posted a photograph of somebody in an FBI jacket escorting a girl into the again of a sedan outdoors a terminal at LAX.
Mafi is an Iranian nationwide who grew to become a lawful everlasting resident of america in 2016, Essayli mentioned.
A prison criticism dated March 12 alleges that Mafi and an unnamed co-conspirator operated an organization in Oman known as Atlas Worldwide Enterprise by means of which weapons and ammunition had been trafficked. The corporate obtained over $7 million in funds in 2025.
Individually, Mafi and the co-conspirator brokered the sale of 55,000 bomb fuses to the Sudanese Ministry of Protection, in line with the court docket paperwork.
“In reference to the transaction, Mafi submitted a letter of intent to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (‘IRGC’) to buy the bomb fuses for Sudan,” the criticism mentioned.
Mafi is scheduled to look in U.S. District Court docket in Los Angeles on Monday. If convicted, she might withstand 20 years in jail.
The Sudanese civil war has created a humanitarian disaster within the North African nation the place meals provides are dwindling and hundreds of thousands of individuals have fled their houses.
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