LONDON, July 7 (Reuters) – Britain on Tuesday summoned Iran’s Charg\u00e9 d\u2019Affaires, Tehran’s most senior diplomat in London, after two Romanian nationals were given lengthy jail sentences over the stabbing of a journalist working for a Persian-language media group in London. <\/p>\n
The two men, Nandito Badea, 21, and George Stana, 25, -who British prosecutors said were acting as proxies for the Iranian government – were sentenced last week to eight years and 12 years in jail respectively for their role in the 2024 attack. <\/p>\n
They had pleaded not guilty to charges of wounding with intent but were convicted at London’s Woolwich Crown Court in June. <\/p>\n
Pouria Zaratifoukolaei, known as Pouria Zeraati, a British journalist of Iranian origin who works for Iran International, was stabbed three times in the leg near his home in southwest London in March 2024. <\/p>\n
British lawmakers said last year that Iran posed a significant and wide-ranging threat to Britain. Iran’s embassy in London said it rejected the “unfounded, politically motivated and hostile allegations”. <\/p>\n
The embassy did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on the British government’s latest move.<\/p>\n
The British Foreign Office statement said the judge had “concluded that this attack (on the journalist) was carried out in the interests of, and on behalf of, the Iranian state”.<\/p>\n
“This follows a longstanding pattern of hostile activity by the Iranian intelligence services on UK soil,” it said.<\/p>\n
“Iran\u2019s actions attempt to undermine UK sovereignty and security and are completely unacceptable \u2013 it must cease in these activities immediately,” it said.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Muvija MEditing by Gareth Jones)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONDON, July 7 (Reuters) – Britain on Tuesday summoned Iran’s Charg\u00e9 d\u2019Affaires, Tehran’s most senior diplomat in London,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":679863,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-679862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/679862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=679862"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/679862\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/679863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=679862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=679862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=679862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}