A newer update of this story has been published: Mostafa Sepahvand tells London court an IRGC officer threatened to kill him
As the trial of three men accused of spying for the Islamic Republic continued at Woolwich Crown Court in London, prosecutors on Friday, 9 October 2026, presented evidence that the defendants had gathered the address of the Iran International network's office and details of the daily life of Kambiz Hosseini, a presenter and satirist at the channel, for the Islamic Republic's intelligence apparatus.
The defendants are Mostafa Sepahvand, 41, Farhad Javadi-Manesh, 46, and Shapour Qalehali Khani Nouri, 57, who are being tried under Britain's National Security Act 2023, and all three deny the charges. According to the prosecution, the group's ultimate aim was for at least one of the targets to suffer "serious violence"; the role of carrying out the attack was assigned to Sepahvand, and the other two defendants helped plan it.
Court evidence on the tracking of journalists
According to Iran International, prosecutors said that on 19 December 2024 Sepahvand received a postcode from a British mobile number and sent it to Javadi-Manesh; the code identified the location of Volant Media, Iran International's parent company. Five days later, Sepahvand sent Javadi-Manesh a photo of Kambiz Hosseini, a link to his Instagram page and information about his website, and in a message asked him to check Hosseini's dog and car on his Instagram. Nouri also sent a video from a park in which Hosseini was walking his dog.
Photos recovered from Nouri's phone show, from several angles and from inside a car, the building in Brentford where Mojtaba Pourmohsen, another Iran International journalist, used to live. Pourmohsen lived there from 2019 to 2023 and, according to the prosecution, the defendants did not know he had moved. According to the Associated Press, Jonathan Turner, a co-founder of the group UK Lawyers for Israel, was also on the group's list of targets.
Money, contacts and the defendants' accounts
Prosecutors said Sepahvand was in contact with a person named Mostafa Ghorbani and another contact in Iran, and messages discuss a payment into an account in his name at Refah Kargaran Bank. He also sent Ghorbani two court documents about the seizure of vehicles linked to him and received a reply saying his case would be sorted out. At the first session of the trial on 6 October, a voice message from Sepahvand was also played in which, according to British media, he complained that the pay for the reconnaissance was low and said he would finish off the targets for £150,000.
Sepahvand accepts that he carried out reconnaissance for the Islamic Republic but says he did so out of fear and deliberately did it badly; the prosecution has called that claim entirely baseless. The other two defendants accept going to these places and taking photographs but say they did not know they were helping the Islamic Republic's intelligence apparatus.
The Woolwich case is the latest example of the Islamic Republic's transnational repression against free Persian-language media outside the country.
Iran International and its journalists have repeatedly been targets of threats and attacks in recent years, and British police have repeatedly announced the foiling of plots linked to the Islamic Republic on British soil.
Comments
No comments yet. Be the first.