A federal jury has convicted a Pakistani national on charges related to smuggling Iranian-made advanced conventional weaponry destined for the Houthis in Yemen and threatening multiple witnesses.
According to court records and evidence presented at trial, on the night of January 11, 2024, U.S. Central Command Navy forces operating from the USS LEWIS B. PULLER, including Navy SEALs and members of the U.S. Coast Guard Maritime Security Response Team East, boarded an unflagged dhow, a small vessel, in the Arabian Sea off the coast of Somalia.
The U.S. boarding team encountered 14 individual mariners on the vessel, including the captain, Muhammad Pahlawan, 49.
During a search of the dhow, the U.S. boarding team located and seized Iranian-made advanced conventional weaponry, including ballistic missile components, anti-ship cruise missile components, and a warhead.
The type of weaponry found aboard the dhow is consistent with the weaponry used by the Houthi rebel forces during the time of the charged conspiracy against merchant ships and U.S. military ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden after the October 7 Hamas attack in Israel.
During the interdiction, Pahlawan lied to the boarding team, instructed other crewmembers to lie, and eventually threatened the lives of his crewmembers and their families.
Pahlawan’s January 2024 trip was part of a larger operation. From in or around August 2023 through in or around January 2024, Pahlawan worked with two Iranian brothers, Shahab Mir’kazei (Shahab) and Yunus Mir’kazei (Yunus), affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, to smuggle materials from Iran to the Houthi rebel forces in Yemen.
Pahlawan completed multiple smuggling voyages, coordinated and funded by Shahab and Yunus, by travelling with cargo from Iran to the coast of Somalia and transporting that cargo to another vessel for a nighttime ship-to-ship transfer.
Pahlawan worked with Shahab and Yunus to prepare the dhow for these smuggling voyages, received specific coordinates from them for the ship-to-ship transfers, and received multiple payments from them for his role in the smuggling operation.
Pahlawan was convicted of conspiring to provide material support and resources to terrorists, providing material support and resources to Iran’s weapons of mass destruction program, providing material support to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’s weapons of mass destruction program, conspiring to and indeed transporting explosive devices to the Houthis knowing those explosives would be used to cause harm, and threatening his crew.
He is scheduled to be sentenced on September 22, and most statutes of conviction include a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison. A federal district court judge will determine sentences after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.
