UK counterterrorism police investigate attack on Iranian TV presenter outside his London home
- Pouria Zeraati, a presenter at London-based Persian-language outlet Iran International, was stabbed in the leg on Friday. He is in a stable condition
- Police said Zeraati’s occupation and recent threats to UK-based Iranian journalists triggered investigation even though motivate for attack is unclear
British counterterrorism police are investigating the stabbing of an Iranian television presenter outside his home in London as concern grows over threats to a Farsi-language satellite news channel long critical of Iran’s theocratic government.
Pouria Zeraati, a presenter at London-based Persian-language outlet Iran International, was stabbed in the leg on Friday afternoon and is in stable condition at a hospital, the channel’s spokesman Adam Baillie said. His condition is not believed to be life-threatening.
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The force said officers were keeping “an open mind”, but that “the victim’s occupation as a journalist at a Persian-language media organisation based in the UK” was being considered.
“While we continue to assess the circumstances of this incident, detectives are following a number of lines of inquiry and our priority at this time is to try and identify whoever was behind this attack and to arrest them,” Commander Dominic Murphy, head of the Met’s Counter Terrorism Command, said in a statement.
“I appreciate the wider concern this incident may cause – particularly amongst others in similar lines of work, and those from Iranian communities.”
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Iran International spokesman Adam Baillie said the stabbing was “hugely frightening.” Although the channel’s journalists have been threatened in the past, this is the first attack of its kind, Baillie told the BBC.
“It was a shocking, shocking incident, whatever the outcome of an investigation reveals,” he said.
Zeraati, in his 30s, sustained injuries to his leg in the midafternoon attack outside his home in Wimbledon, southwest London.
Announcing the incident on social media, Iran International noted it came after Tehran was implicated in a plot to kill two of its television anchors in 2022.
Baillie said the channel’s journalists and their families and others had been repeatedly targeted and threatened by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).
“Along with our colleagues at BBC Persian, Iran International has been under threat, very heavy threats, for the last 18 months since the IRGC said ‘We’re coming for you’,” he added.
Baillie said the paramilitary security force gets “in touch through proxies” and its tactics include taking in relatives in Iran for questioning and threatening.
“The scale of that has increased dramatically over the last few months. And the scale and the type of questioning is more aggressive,” he added.
The Met has disrupted what it has called plots in the UK to kidnap or even kill British or Britain-based individuals perceived as enemies of Tehran.
An Austrian national was convicted last December of spying for a group that may have been preparing to attack Iran International.
She died in 2022 after her arrest in Tehran for an alleged breach of the Islamic republic’s strict dress code for women.
Police say they have disrupted “a number” of plots to kill or kidnap people in the UK who were seen as enemies of the Iranian government. Officers are working with intelligence agencies to disrupt future plots and provide protection for the targeted organisations and individuals, police said.
Early last year, Iran International temporarily shut down its operations in London and moved to studios in Washington after what it described as an escalation of “state-backed threats from Iran”. The station resumed operations at a new location in London last September.
An Austrian man was convicted in December of attempting to collect information likely to be useful for terrorism after security guards spotted him carrying out surveillance on the former headquarters of Iran International. Magomed-Husejn Dovtaev, 31, was sentenced to three years and six months in prison.
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Alicia Kearns, chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Commons, expressed concern that Britain still is not doing enough to protect opponents of the Iranian government.
“Whilst we don’t know the circumstances of this attack, Iran continues to hunt down those brave enough to speak out against the regime,” Kearns said on X, formerly Twitter. “Yet I remain unconvinced that we and our allies have clear strategies to protect people in our countries from them, and protect our interests abroad.”
Earlier this month, Foreign Secretary David Cameron condemned the conviction in absentia of 10 journalists from the BBC’s Persian service on propaganda charges against the Islamic Republic of Iran, calling it “completely unacceptable”.
“And also, when I last met the Iranian foreign minister, I raised the case of the fact that Iran was paying thugs to try and murder Iranian journalists providing free and independent information for Iran TV in Britain,” Cameron said in the House of Lords. “On both counts, in my view, they are guilty.”
Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse
