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"As I greeted [Hashemi] with warmth, since we were best friends, she whispers in my ear as we hugged, 'The FBI hates us," Mehanna recounted. "She added that eighty percent of the questions they [the FBI] asked her were about New Horizon! The rest were about Monica Witt and her connection to her."
"When they asked her about Witt," the New Horizon co-founder added, "she tried to deny everything. But they had evidence from her emails, WhatsApp messages, and phone calls that she had been in continuous contact with her."
Hashemi confirmed that she had been grilled by the FBI about New Horizon: "I was asked about many subjects regarding Iran, and that conference was one of the subjects."
According to Mehanna, her husband, New Horizon co-founder Talebzadeh, demanded Hashemi go public with the information about her interrogation. "She refused on the premise that it was part of the 'sealed portion' of Witt's indictment," Mehanna said.
On February 8, Witt's indictment was unsealed. Department of Justice officials subsequently told members of the media that Hashemi was the "Individual A" referred to in the indictment as Witt's "spotter."
Five days later, the US Treasury Department announced sanctions on Mehanna and Talebzadeh, claiming that they "organize[d] international conferences that supported the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force's (IRGC-QF's) efforts to recruit and collect intelligence from foreign attendees, including US persons."
The sanctions designation of the two New Horizon founders, a filmmaker and a writer, was accompanied by acronym, SDGT, or Specially Designated Global Terrorist. This meant that they would be tainted with a label traditionally reserved for members of violent extremist organizations like Al Qaeda and the Islamic State.
Mehanna's personal savings account was subsequently frozen in her home country of Lebanon as a result of the sanctions.
She now looks back on the episode and Hashemi's role in it with anger.
"The irony is that Nader [Talebzadeh] and I get an SGDT status when we had nothing to do with Monica Witt, while the actual person who was Witt's handler is free and undesignated," Mehanna reflected. "Isn't that a total farce?"
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