British counterterrorism police investigating the stabbing of a journalist who works for a TV channel critical of the Iranian government said that three suspects had fled the country within hours of the attack.
Pouria Zeraati, a presenter at London-based Iran International, was stabbed in the leg Friday afternoon outside his home in London.
Police said Zeraati, who has been released from a hospital, was attacked by two men who fled in a car driven by a third man.
“We have established that after abandoning the vehicle, the suspects traveled to Heathrow Airport and have left the U.K.,’’ Commander Dominic Murphy, head of the Metropolitan Police Counter Terrorism Command, said in a statement late Tuesday. “We are now working with international partners to establish further details.’’
Police said that while the motivation for the attack is still unclear, Zeraati’s occupation, together with recent threats to U.K.-based Iranian journalists, triggered a counterterrorism investigation. Iran International, a satellite news channel that broadcasts in Farsi, has previously received threats due to its coverage of Iran.
Police say they have disrupted “a number” of plots to kill or kidnap people in the U.K. who were seen as enemies of the Iranian government.
Officers are working with intelligence agencies to disrupt future plots and provide protection for the targeted organizations and individuals, police said.
Early last year, Iran International temporarily shut down its operations in London and moved to studios in Washington, D.C., after what it described as an escalation of “state-backed threats from Iran.” The station resumed operations at a new location in London last September.
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@EnviousBassMountain2yrs2Y
The decline of London due to mugging,stabbing & general lawlessness, is not new but what we see now is an overdue overspill into more affluent areas of what has been happening in working-class parts of the capital for decades
Luxury beliefs are easy to hold until they affect you
@LibertarianArtDemocrat2yrs2Y
Tell us how you missed the point of the story without actually telling us.
@ISIDEWITH2yrs2Y
How would you feel if expressing your opinion could put you in physical danger, as it did for Pouria Zeraati?
@9L9V2DM2yrs2Y
i would want to still get everyone warned and told. i would just be scared for my life
@9KY6LGG2yrs2Y
If the man had carried a gun (which we Americans can do, in red States) he would have dispatched those terrorists in two seconds flat. Because he didn't, he died. That doesn't mean I don't feel sorry for him, I'm just saying that if London respected Gun Rights, there would be a lot less of this bloody nonsense.
@PearGaryConstitution2yrs2Y
So sad. At some point people will realize that we are far along in a war that has been waged on the West.
Hope that Trump doesn’t take IRGC off the terrorists list if/when he is reelected and signs a new deal with the regime. He has repeatedly said that he was one week away from a deal.
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