A prominent exiled Iranian journalist was stabbed outside his home in London on Friday, prompting British police to launch a counterterrorism investigation. <\/p>\n
Pouria Zeraati, a television anchor at the UK-based channel Iran International, was reportedly attacked by a group of men outside his home in south-western Wimbledon. The assailants then fled in a car. <\/p>\n
London Metropolitan Police said in a statement on Friday that Zeraati\u2019s injuries were not believed to be life-threatening and that he was in stable condition. <\/p>\n
The Met said it is too early to determine a motive for the crime, but given the victim\u2019s occupation \u201ccoupled with the fact that there has been a number of threats directed towards this group of journalists in recent times,\u201d the department\u2019s counterterrorism command would be investigating. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe do not know the reason why this victim was attacked and there could be a number of explanations for this. While we continue to assess the circumstances of this incident, detectives are following a number of lines of enquiry,\u201d Commander Dominic Murphy, the head of the command, said in a statement. <\/p>\n
While Tehran has not been implicated in the attack, the incident has already fueled concerns it could be involved. Iran has designated the television station a \u201cterrorist entity.\u201d Iranian state media has repeatedly accused the channel of fomenting unrest. <\/p>\n
Zeraati\u2019s stabbing comes after an investigation by Britain\u2019s ITV last year revealed that Iranian spies had attempted to pay a people smuggler $200,000 to assassinate two Iran International journalists. The probe prompted the British government in January to sanction seven members of Iran\u2019s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the elite paramilitary organization established in the aftermath of the country\u2019s revolution in 1979. <\/p>\n
The chair of Parliament\u2019s Foreign Affairs Committee, Alicia Kearns, and the general secretary of the British National Union of Journalists, Michelle Stanistreet, both issued carefully worded statements that avoided pinning blame on Iran but called for more to be done to protect journalists. <\/p>\n
\u201dThis brutal stabbing will inevitably raise fears amongst the many journalists targeted at Iran International and the BBC Persian Service that they are not safe at home or going about their work,\u201d Stanistreet said. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe international community needs to up the pressure on Iran and the UN needs to hold Iran accountable for its actions,\u201d she added. <\/p>\n
Kearns noted on Twitter that Iran International had only recently returned to the air from London after having to shut down in the UK. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis is deeply upsetting,\u201d she said on X. \u201cWhilst we don\u2019t know the circumstances of this attack, Iran continues to hunt down those brave enough to speak out against the regime.\u201d <\/p>\n
Iran\u2019s charge d\u2019affaires in the UK, Seyed Mehdi Hosseini Matin, denied \u201cany link to this story of this so called journalist\u201d on X. <\/p>\n\n
A prominent exiled Iranian journalist was stabbed outside his home in London on Friday, prompting British police to launch a counterterrorism investigation. Pouria Zeraati, a television anchor at the UK-based channel Iran International, was reportedly attacked by a group of men outside his home in south-western Wimbledon. The assailants then fled in a car. London <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":17462,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-17461","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17461"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17461\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}