LONDON: The Committee to Protect Journalists said it welcomed a UK court’s decision to convict two Romanian men for the stabbing of Iran International journalist Pouria Zeraati in an attack prosecutors said was ordered by the Iranian state.
“The evidence presented in this trial was deeply chilling, showing the level of planning and extended surveillance that preceded Pouria Zeraati’s stabbing,” said CPJ Europe and Central Asia Director Fiona O’Brien, who described it as a “targeted, deliberate, and funded attack.”
She added that while the convictions were welcome, “those who ordered it must also be held accountable.”
Zeraati, a prominent presenter for the Persian-language broadcaster, was stabbed three times in the leg near his southwest London home on March 29, 2024, and was hospitalized for several weeks. His attackers fled the UK immediately after the attack.
Prosecutors told the jury at Woolwich Crown Court the assault was “a planned attack preceded by reconnaissance and which was ordered by a third party acting on behalf of the Iranian state.”
Nandito Badea, 21, and George Stana, 25, were found guilty of wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm. Both had denied the charges and will be sentenced on July 3.
A third suspect, David Andrei, was arrested in Romania but could not be extradited to the UK.
Frank Ferguson, head of the Crown Prosecution Service’s Special Crime and Counter Terrorism Division, said the defendants were “not acting on impulse, but were recruited, funded, and directed to carry out violence,” adding that the convictions highlighted the seriousness of an offence “designed to silence a journalist through intimidation and violence.”
The trial judge has yet to formally determine whether the attack was linked to Iran.
Mehdi Hosseini Matin, who headed Iran’s diplomatic mission to the UK at the time, has consistently denied any Iranian involvement.
O’Brien warned that the threat to Iranian journalists in the UK had “only risen since 2024” and called on the British government to strengthen its response to transnational repression.
The case is one of several targeting Iranian journalists in the UK.
A Greek national accused of spying on a UK-based journalist from the broadcaster is due to stand trial on June 19.
In 2023, a Chechen-born Austrian national was convicted of conducting surveillance on Iran International’s premises and sentenced to three years and six months in jail.
In February, before the US-Israeli strikes on Iran, exiled Iranian journalists working for the BBC warned that their movements were being closely monitored by Iranian authorities, and that their families back home were being interrogated and persecuted because of their reporting.
