U.K. counterterrorism police investigate attack on Iranian TV presenter outside his home
DANICA KIRKA March 30, 2024
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 Irans theocratic government.
Pouria Zeraati, a presenter at London-based Iran International, was stabbed in the leg Friday afternoon and is hospitalized and stable, the station said. His condition is not believed to be life-threatening.
Londons Metropolitan Police Service said Zeraatis occupation, together with recent threats to U.K.-based Iranian journalists, triggered the counterterrorism probe, even though the motivation for the attack is still unclear.
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 Mets 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.”
Iran International spokesman Adam Baillie said the stabbing was hugely frightening.” Although the channels 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.
Mehdi Hosseini Matin, Irans charge daffaires in the U.K., said, we deny any link to the incident.
Police say they have disrupted a number of plots to kill or kidnap people in the U.K. 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 organizations and individuals, police said.
Early last year, Iran International temporarily shut down its operations in London and moved to studios in Washington, D.C., 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 3 1/2 years in prison.
Alicia Kearns, chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Commons, expressed concern that Britain still isnt doing enough to protect opponents of the Iranian government.
Whilst we dont 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 Iran’s conviction in absentia of 10 journalists from the BBCs 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.
Kirka writes for the Associated Press.
