LONDON: Iranian agents blackmailed a BBC Persian journalist by threatening to publish revealing photos of her as part of a wider campaign against the British media outlet, staff at the broadcaster told Arab News.
New details emerged on Saturday about alleged harassment of BBC Persian reporters’ family members and loved ones at the hands of the Iranian security services.
Negin Shiraghaei, a BBC Persian anchor, told The Times that her elderly father, who has stage-four cancer, had been interrogated by the security services. Rana Rahimpour, a presenter, also said that her parents were brought in for questioning on multiple occasions by Iranian authorities.
Another BBC Persian presenter told Arab News she had been blackmailed by Iranian agents, who threatened to spread rumors about her sex life and compromising pictures. The tawdry tactics had also been used against men, the reporter said, declining to be named due to security concerns. A fake news story about the sexual misconduct of another BBC Persian presenter had been widely disseminated by Iranian agents, she added.
“If they want to make women silenced, they just threaten, (saying) ‘OK, we are publishing stories about your sex life’,” the reporter said.
The reporter told Arab News that Iranian agents had raided her family’s home in Tehran, confiscating a number of cameras and laptops, and arresting a family member.
That’s when the menacing Facebook messages started.
“I got many threatening messages on Facebook and social media from different people saying that (a family member) was arrested and ‘we found many photos of you — if you don’t cooperate with the Iranian intelligence we are going to (publish them),” she told Arab News.
The journalist said she did not know what, if any, intimate photos the Iranian intelligence services have of her, but decried the ploy as “very dirty.”
The smear campaign was intended as leverage to pressure her into resigning from her job as a reporter with BBC Persian, she said. Failing that, she said, the intelligence services wanted her to provide them information about the British news organization.
Blackmail is just part of a string of tactics the Iranian authorities have allegedly used to pressure BBC Persian employees. Family members and friends of BBC Persian staffers, including the elderly and ill, have been arrested and interrogated, according to reports.
According to an internal survey of 96 BBC Persian employees, 44 had been accused of sexual impropriety while the vast majority, 86, reported being harassed. Almost half said their parents had been questioned by authorities in Iran.
Iran has ratcheted up its campaign against BBC Persian reporters and their families since the contested 2009 presidential election.
While BBC Persian is technically banned in Iran, the broadcasts draw listeners eager to hear news updates that have not been filtered through the regime’s official channels. According to the BBC, 13 million Iranians tune into the marquee World Service broadcast despite the official injunction.
Last month, the Iranian government initiated a criminal probe into many of the journalists working for BBC Persian in London, accusing them of conspiracy against the country’s national security. Over the summer, the Iranian judiciary froze the assets of more than 150 BBC Persian staffers because of their work with the British broadcaster.
The experiences of the BBC Persian staffers and their families — who have been subjected to violence, threats or indignities by the Iranian authorities — have been decried by the BBC.
Tony Hall, director general of the BBC, has called the campaign an “unprecedented collective punishment of journalists who are simply doing their jobs.”
Officials at the Iranian Embassy in London did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
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Iranian agents blackmailed BBC reporter with ‘naked photo’ threats
Iranian agents blackmailed BBC reporter with ‘naked photo’ threats
Prince Harry’s war against UK press reaches showdown with Daily Mail case
- Prince Harry to give evidence in London court for second time
- Media accused of phone hacking and other privacy intrusions
LONDON:Prince Harry’s war against the British press heads into a final showdown next week with the start of his
privacy lawsuit against the publisher of the powerful Daily Mail newspaper over alleged unlawful action he says contributed to his departure for the US
The 41-year-old Harry, a boy when his mother Princess Diana died in a 1997 car crash with paparazzi in pursuit, has long resented the often aggressive tactics of British media and pledged to bring them to account.
Harry, who is King Charles’ younger son, and six other claimants including singer Elton John are suing Associated Newspapers over years of alleged unlawful behavior, ranging from bugging phone lines to obtaining personal health records.
Associated has rejected any wrongdoing, calling the accusations “preposterous smears” and part of a conspiracy.
Over the course of nine weeks, Harry, John and the other claimants – John’s husband David Furnish, actors Liz Hurley and Sadie Frost, campaigner Doreen Lawrence, and former British lawmaker Simon Hughes – will give evidence to the High Court in London and be grilled by Associated’s lawyers.
The prince is due to appear next Thursday. It will be his second such court appearance in the witness box in three years, having become the first British royal to give evidence in 130 years in 2023 in another lawsuit.
Current and former senior Associated staff, including a number of editors of national newspapers, will likewise be quizzed by the claimants’ legal team. The stakes for both sides are high, with not just the reputation of media and claimants on the line, but because legal costs are set to run into tens of millions of pounds. Critics say Harry, the Duke of Sussex, is bitter over unfavorable coverage, from partying in his youth to quarrelling with his family and leaving the UK in later years.
But supporters say it is a noble cause against sometimes immoral media.
“He seems to be motivated by a lot more than money,” said Damian Tambini, an expert in media and communications regulation and policy at the London School of Economics.
“He’s actually trying to, along with many of the other complainants, affect change in the newspapers.”
Harry and his American wife Meghan have cited media harassment as one of the main factors that led them to stepping down from royal duties and moving to California in 2020. Elton John, 77, also has history in the courts with the British press, successfully suing newspapers including the Daily Mail for libel. He received 1 million pounds ($1.34 million) from the Sun in a 1988 settlement over a false allegation about sex sessions with male prostitutes.
Having successfully sued Mirror Group Newspapers, and also won damages, an apology and some admission of wrongdoing from Rupert Murdoch’s News Group Newspapers (NGN), the case against Associated could be Harry’s most significant. The 130-year-old Daily Mail, renowned for championing traditional, conservative values, for decades has been one of, if not the most powerful media force within Britain and unlike the Mirror and NGN has not been embroiled in the phone-hacking scandal.
It says it gives voice to millions in “Middle England,” holding the rich, powerful and famous to account.
In 1997, it famously ran a front page denouncing five men accused of the racist killing of Black teenager Stephen Lawrence as murderers and challenging anyone to sue if that was wrong.
The case was a defining moment in race relations in Britain.
Despite that, one of those now suing the Mail is Doreen Lawrence, the mother of murdered Stephen, who says journalists tapped her phones, monitored her bank accounts and phone bills, and paid police for confidential information.
The Associated case will mark one of the final airings in court of accusations of phone-hacking which have dogged the British press for more than 20 years.
The practice of unlawfully accessing voicemails fully burst onto the public agenda in 2011, leading to the closure of Murdoch’s News of the World tabloid, the jailing of its former editor who had later worked as a communications chief for ex-Prime Minister David Cameron, and a public inquiry.
Murdoch’s NGN and the Mirror Group have since both paid out hundreds of millions of pounds to victims of the unlawful activity.
If the claimants lose, Tambini said, “this could be the moment when phone hacking, finally, as a set of issues, went away.”
privacy lawsuit against the publisher of the powerful Daily Mail newspaper over alleged unlawful action he says contributed to his departure for the US
The 41-year-old Harry, a boy when his mother Princess Diana died in a 1997 car crash with paparazzi in pursuit, has long resented the often aggressive tactics of British media and pledged to bring them to account.
Harry, who is King Charles’ younger son, and six other claimants including singer Elton John are suing Associated Newspapers over years of alleged unlawful behavior, ranging from bugging phone lines to obtaining personal health records.
Associated has rejected any wrongdoing, calling the accusations “preposterous smears” and part of a conspiracy.
Over the course of nine weeks, Harry, John and the other claimants – John’s husband David Furnish, actors Liz Hurley and Sadie Frost, campaigner Doreen Lawrence, and former British lawmaker Simon Hughes – will give evidence to the High Court in London and be grilled by Associated’s lawyers.
The prince is due to appear next Thursday. It will be his second such court appearance in the witness box in three years, having become the first British royal to give evidence in 130 years in 2023 in another lawsuit.
Current and former senior Associated staff, including a number of editors of national newspapers, will likewise be quizzed by the claimants’ legal team. The stakes for both sides are high, with not just the reputation of media and claimants on the line, but because legal costs are set to run into tens of millions of pounds. Critics say Harry, the Duke of Sussex, is bitter over unfavorable coverage, from partying in his youth to quarrelling with his family and leaving the UK in later years.
But supporters say it is a noble cause against sometimes immoral media.
“He seems to be motivated by a lot more than money,” said Damian Tambini, an expert in media and communications regulation and policy at the London School of Economics.
“He’s actually trying to, along with many of the other complainants, affect change in the newspapers.”
Harry and his American wife Meghan have cited media harassment as one of the main factors that led them to stepping down from royal duties and moving to California in 2020. Elton John, 77, also has history in the courts with the British press, successfully suing newspapers including the Daily Mail for libel. He received 1 million pounds ($1.34 million) from the Sun in a 1988 settlement over a false allegation about sex sessions with male prostitutes.
Having successfully sued Mirror Group Newspapers, and also won damages, an apology and some admission of wrongdoing from Rupert Murdoch’s News Group Newspapers (NGN), the case against Associated could be Harry’s most significant. The 130-year-old Daily Mail, renowned for championing traditional, conservative values, for decades has been one of, if not the most powerful media force within Britain and unlike the Mirror and NGN has not been embroiled in the phone-hacking scandal.
It says it gives voice to millions in “Middle England,” holding the rich, powerful and famous to account.
In 1997, it famously ran a front page denouncing five men accused of the racist killing of Black teenager Stephen Lawrence as murderers and challenging anyone to sue if that was wrong.
The case was a defining moment in race relations in Britain.
Despite that, one of those now suing the Mail is Doreen Lawrence, the mother of murdered Stephen, who says journalists tapped her phones, monitored her bank accounts and phone bills, and paid police for confidential information.
The Associated case will mark one of the final airings in court of accusations of phone-hacking which have dogged the British press for more than 20 years.
The practice of unlawfully accessing voicemails fully burst onto the public agenda in 2011, leading to the closure of Murdoch’s News of the World tabloid, the jailing of its former editor who had later worked as a communications chief for ex-Prime Minister David Cameron, and a public inquiry.
Murdoch’s NGN and the Mirror Group have since both paid out hundreds of millions of pounds to victims of the unlawful activity.
If the claimants lose, Tambini said, “this could be the moment when phone hacking, finally, as a set of issues, went away.”
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