Iranians on trial over alleged plot against journalists

Prosecutor Bill Emlyn Jones told a Woolwich jury that three men had used ChatGPT to research the homes and workplaces of people of interest to the Iranian regime. “This information will help the planning where these targets may be susceptible to an attack. Such information is of obvious value to a foreign intelligence service seeking to monitor and target these individuals,” he said.

Mostafa Sepahvand, 41, of St John's Wood, Farhad Javadi Manesh, 46, of Brent and Kensal Rise, and Shapoor Qalehali Khani Noori, 57, of Ealing, stood at Woolwich Crown Court on Tuesday, 6 October 2026, each with a translator. All three men had been born in Iran. They entered pleas of not guilty to charges under the National Security Act 2023 of assisting a foreign intelligence service. The defendants, Emlyn Jones said, had engaged in “conduct likely to assist a foreign intelligence service, in other words… they spied on people of interest to the Iranian regime.”

The alleged window of surveillance ran from August 2024 into February or March 2025. In that stretch the men visited addresses linked to people the Crown said were of interest, took photographs and videos, and conducted open-source research. Named among the targets were Mojtaba Pourmohsen, a journalist with Iran International, and Jonathan Turner, a barrister who founded UK Lawyers for Israel. Iran International, a Persian-language broadcaster based in London and critical of the Iranian government since its establishment there in 2017, had been designated a terrorist organization by Iran’s government in 2022.

Sepahvand is separately charged with engaging in surveillance, reconnaissance and open-source research intending to commit serious violence. Manesh and Noori face a further charge of engaging in surveillance and reconnaissance with the intention that serious violence would be committed by others. Emlyn Jones framed the case around a single purpose. “In this trial we are concerned with steps being taken here in London, on behalf of the Iranian regime, to target journalists and others considered to be hostile to, or just critical of the regime,” he told the jury. The work of visiting addresses, taking photographs and videos, and assembling open research was not, on the Crown’s account, an end in itself. “Their ultimate objective was that one or more of their targets would be subjected to serious violence, no doubt as retribution for their criticism of the Iranian regime and to try to silence and deter others who might dare to voice their criticism.” Sepahvand, the prosecution said, had been earmarked to carry out any attack. Manesh and Noori were said to have supported the groundwork that would make such an attack possible.

None of the methods, Emlyn Jones added, rose to the level of advanced tradecraft. “None of this was particularly high-tech, none of this was very sophisticated. But it served a simple purpose - to gather enough information about their targets, so that those targets could be made to suffer the consequences of daring to criticise the Iranian regime.”

He placed the London work inside a stated pattern. Emlyn Jones told the jury that “eliminating hostile, critical or dissident actors overseas is a staple policy” of Iran. The rulers, he said, “do not and cannot, tolerate dissent.” He gave the jury a public comparison: the 1989 fatwa against Salman Rushdie over the novel The Satanic Verses, and the 2022 stabbing of Rushdie in New York. More than thirty years after Iran’s Supreme Leader had pronounced a death sentence against him, the writer was attacked and lost the sight in one eye. Even overseas, Emlyn Jones said, critics remained at risk. Persian-language satellite television channels broadcasting from abroad had come under increasing attack, and Iran International was on the Crown’s account therefore very much in the regime’s sights.

The visits to the linked addresses, the photographs and the videos were not in dispute. All three men accepted that they had conducted the surveillance and reconnaissance the Crown described. The argument that remained turned on knowledge and will: whether each defendant understood the purpose of the work, and whether he intended the consequences the prosecution alleged.

Manesh and Noori’s account was one of ignorance of any Iranian intelligence link. They accepted going to the places and taking the pictures and films, but without any awareness, on their telling, that the work served a foreign service. Sepahvand’s account ran differently. He accepted that he had carried out the surveillance and reconnaissance for the Iranian regime. He said he had done so only under coercion, bullied or threatened into the work, and that he had acted out of fear of the consequences of refusing. Emlyn Jones put the second limb of that defence to the jury in plain terms. “His case is also that he deliberately did a bad job of it, so that the Iranian intelligence service would not actually get the assistance they wanted.”

The trial is expected to last up to six weeks. The earlier stages of the case had already fixed the three men in custody for more than a year. On 17 May 2025 they appeared at Westminster magistrates’ court in grey tracksuits. Sepahvand, who had injured his knee during the arrest, was wheeled into the dock. District Judge Annabel Pilling remanded all three. On 26 September 2025 they appeared by videolink at the Central Criminal Court and entered pleas of not guilty. Manesh’s application for bail was refused. The three men remained held as the weeks of evidence opened at Woolwich.