An Iranian television presenter stabbed in a knife attack commissioned by the Tehran regime says police failed to connect a series of warnings and suspicious incidents which, he believes, might have prevented the violent assault against him.
Iran International journalist Pouria Zeraati was left bleeding in the street after he was attacked by proxies of the Iranian regime outside his home in Wimbledon, south-west London, on March 29 2024.
Zeraati, an anchor at the Persian-language broadcaster Iran International, said he was “shocked” to discover that his wife had unwittingly recorded one of his future attackers carrying out reconnaissance outside their London home more than a year before the stabbing.
Zeraati’s wife filmed two men after noticing them behaving suspiciously outside the couple’s apartment block in March 2023, dressed in black with their hoods up and wandering across the driveway.
She shared the footage with police, who detained and questioned the men, but concluded there was no evidence linking them to the threats from Tehran against Zeraati.
But in March 2024, it was one of those men, 25-year-old George Stana, who returned to the same address as part of a group that stabbed Zeraati three times in the leg – an attack commissioned by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Stana, alongside fellow Romanian Nandito Badea, was found guilty on Friday of attacking Zeraati at Woolwich Crown Court.
It is believed to be the first successful prosecution in the UK connected to an attack by criminals acting on behalf of the Iranian regime.
Zeraati worked for Iran International, a competitor of the state broadcaster, which the Iranian regime designated a terrorist organisation and branded “a network of spies”.
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