Naji Sharifi Zindashti – Iranian in spotlight

Trump urged Iranians to “take over your government” when the military strikes are over. Tehran responded by targeting American bases throughout the Middle East. Its a major conflict, and a friend of Iran is an enemy of America.

Key friend of Iran, and Sami El-Helou, is heroin dealer Naji Sharifi Zindashti.

In 2016 Cetin Koç was hit seven times in the head and twice in the chest by Russian and Austrian weapons equipped with silencers in a well planned hit in Dubai. Koç died instantly, his car still running.

Hit men Harpreet Singh Majhu and Orosman Jr. Garcia-Arevalo fled to the airport and were on a plane back to Canada before Dubai cops fingered them as the killers. Cetin Koc used the identity of a shepherd in Turkey. The real name of the murdered drug lord was Parvis Kashavarz Omarabadi. Sami El-Helou was the taskmaster for the hit, working for Iranian drug lord Naji Sharifi Zindashti. Naji Sharifi Zindashti is a close associate of Sami El-Helou and an important supplier of heroin to the Sinaloa Cartel.

Zindashti met with Sami El-Helou a week before the murder. A year was put into it’s planning. The day before the hit, Sami El-Helou met with Harpreet Singh Majhu and Orosman Garcia Arevalo, providing them with weapons, burner phones, and intelligence on Koç. El-Helou arranged the getaway car. He arranged the airport pickup of the assassins in a Rolls-Royce limo, which brought them to where he waited. Payment was in cryptocurrency. The hit was carried out the next day. Initially Gurtaj Singh Sandher was pegged as one of the gunmen.

Hitman Orosman Garcia Aravela was a good friend of Gurtaj Sandher. Sandher was replaced by senior Brothers Keeper gangster Harpreet Majhu because he had not yet proven himself to the Sinaloa Cartel. He remedied that on Oct. 11, 2018 with the Surrey hit of Sumeet Singh Randhawa. On May 11, 2016, a week after Koç’s murder, a farmer found the body of Orosman Garcia Aravela. Harpreet Majhu’s remains were found in a burnt out car in Agassiz on June 10, 2016. The two Canadian killers were eliminated to silence their acquired knowledge. Their ties all led directly to Sami El-Helou.

The Brothers Keepers were ultimately hired by Naji Sharifi Zindashti.

There were rumours Sandher operative Sami El-Helou would be indicted in the U.S., along with Gurtaj Singh Sandher.

Sandher was pulled in for questioning in the fall of 2025 after the U.S. reopened the investigation into the hit of Cetin Koç.

Information flowed after Joaquín Guzmán López delivered Sinaloa Cartel boss Ismael Zambada García ‘El Mayo’.

Zindashti leads “a network of individuals that targeted Iranian dissidents and opposition activists for assassination at the direction of the Iranian regime.”

Zindashti organizes overseas killings on behalf of Iran. He’s involved in drug, human and weapons trafficking and has deep connections to the Islamic Republic’s Revolutionary Guards. (IRGC) Zindashti escaped from an Iranian prison and fled to Turkey, where he established a cartel. Zindashti returned to Iran where he leads an opulent, free life. He has worked for Iranian intelligence in various plots.

In December 2022, he was honored by Iran’s Education Ministry.

Zindashti attended his mother’s funeral in Northern Iran in September 2020.

Zindashti’s network is ‘The Friends’ Club’, and includes senior IRGC officials, members of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, managers from Tehran Municipality, and members of parliament. The IRGC’s control over transit routes gives Zindashti dominance in Iran’s drug trade.