Three alleged Iranian spies carried out surveillance and reconnaissance to target journalists in the UK as part of a plan to commit \u201cserious violence\u201d, a court heard on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Mostafa Sepahvand, 41, Farhad Javadi Manesh, 46, and Shapoor Qalehali Khani Noori, 57, are charged with offences under the National Security Act.<\/p>\n
Their \u201csubjects\u201d included Mojtaba Pourmohsen and Kambiz Hosseini, journalists for London-based Persian broadcaster Iran International, as well as a founder member of UK Lawyers for Israel, Jonathan Turner, the court was told.<\/p>\n
The prosecution alleges Sepahvand intended to physically carry out a \u201cviolent attack\u201d against at least one of the targets, while Manesh and Noori assisted in planning.<\/p>\n
Court artist sketch of Shapoor Qalehali Khani Noori appearing via videolink at the Old Bailey in London in March. Illustration: Elizabeth Cook\/PA<\/p>\n
Sepahvand claims he was threatened into conducting surveillance against his will, but the prosecution described this as an \u201centirely bogus claim\u201d, telling jurors he did it to get paid and have his theft conviction in Iran \u201cfixed\u201d.<\/p>\n
In a voice note read out to Woolwich crown court in London, Sepahvand told an associate he would \u201cfinish off\u201d a target if he was paid \u00a3150,000.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey made me a promise and said: \u2018We\u2019ll sort out your matter\/court case, and we\u2019ll give you \u00a3150,000 as well. Finish the job. We\u2019ll show you him\/her (the target),\u2019\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is an illegal job. It\u2019s something that constitutes a criminal offence, and it carries a heavy prison sentence. At the absolute minimum, they should transfer \u00a310,000 for now.<\/p>\n
\u201cWherever they tell me, I\u2019ll go there and stand there. If the person (the target) is inside, they pay the \u00a3150,000, and I\u2019ll finish him\/her off.\u201d<\/p>\n
The defendants were said to have visited addresses linked to their targets, taken photos and videos and used platforms such as ChatGPT to research them online between August 2024 and March last year.<\/p>\n
There was no dispute that the three defendants conducted the surveillance and reconnaissance, the jury was told.<\/p>\n
Court artist sketch of Farhad Javadi Manesh appearing via videolink at the Old Bailey in London in March. Illustration: Elizabeth Cook\/PA<\/p>\n
Sepahvand accepts he was doing so for the benefit of the Iranian regime but claims he was threatened or bullied into doing it, and that he \u201cdeliberately did a bad job of it\u201d, the prosecution said.<\/p>\n
The crown added that Manesh and Noori claimed they did not know they were carrying out the surveillance to assist the Iranian intelligence service.<\/p>\n
The defendants are charged with engaging in conduct likely to assist a foreign intelligence service.<\/p>\n
Sepahvand, of St John\u2019s Wood, north London, is also charged with engaging in surveillance, reconnaissance and open-source research with the intention to commit serious violence against a person in the UK.<\/p>\n
Manesh, of Brent, and Noori, of Ealing, are also charged with engaging in surveillance and reconnaissance, with the intention that serious violence against a person in the UK would be committed by others.<\/p>\n
The three men, who deny all the charges, were assisted by interpreters in the dock. The trial continues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Three alleged Iranian spies carried out surveillance and reconnaissance to target journalists in the UK as part of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":794469,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-794468","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\/794468","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=794468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794468\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/794469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=794468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=794468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=794468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}