FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) -- A federal jury on Thursday convicted an Iranian woman of attempting to obtain thousands of pairs sophisticated U.S.-made night-vision goggles for Iran's military and police.
Jurors found Shahrazad Mir Gholikhan, 31, guilty of trying to illegally broker the deal to export the goggles, which are subject to strict controls, and of seeking to violate the U.S. embargo against Iran. But the jury acquitted her of three conspiracy counts.
Gholikhan, who acted as her own attorney during the trial, said she would appeal and insisted the she is innocent.
"I won't give up. It's OK. God is here," Gholikhan said in a brief courtroom interview. She appeared relieved that the trial was over.
U.S. District Judge James I. Cohn set sentencing for March 6. Gholikhan, who has already spent a year in jail, faces a total of about five years in prison on the three convictions. Her first trial earlier this year ended in a hung jury.
The 12 jurors declined comment after the verdict was announced.
The case involved the attempted purchase of 3,500 Generation III night-vision goggles for Iran. The goggles are made mainly for U.S. special forces and the Israeli military and cannot be legally exported without a special State Department license.
Gholikhan and her husband, Mahmoud Seif, were arrested 2004 in Vienna, Austria, in 2004 after a hotel meeting with undercover U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents posing as brokers for the goggles. Gholikhan spent a month in an Austrian jail and was released. Seif was also detained but eventually returned to Iran, where he remains.
With the U.S. case hanging over her head, Gholikhan came to the U.S. in December 2007 and pleaded guilty to a single conspiracy count in a deal in which she expected to be allowed to return home. But her plea deal fell apart because of an error in the estimated sentence that left her looking at more than two years in prison.
Gholikhan, the mother of twin 12-year-old daughters still in Iran, then withdrew her guilty plea and decided to go to trial
"I am sure of myself. I am innocent," Gholikhan said in her closing statement Wednesday.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Walleisa said Gholikhan used the alias "Farideh Fahimi" in dozens of taped phone calls and e-mail intercepts that discuss the goggles in detail.
Gholikhan insisted she was under Seif's control and that Fahimi was a Syrian woman who also worked for him. She said Seif "used and abused" her and that he was the boss of the goggle conspiracy. But prosecutors said her story wasn't true.
"She knew what she was doing," Walleisa said. "She was a knowing and willing participant in these acts."
