Two Romanian nationals have been charged over the stabbing of an Iranian journalist outside his home in London earlier this year, UK law enforcement said Thursday.
Nandito Badea, 19, and George Stana, 23, were arrested in Romania on Wednesday and charged with intent to cause grievous bodily harm and wounding, the Crown Prosecution Service said.
They will be extradited to Britain for trial, the prosecuting agency for England and Wales added.
Pouria Zeraati, a presenter in his 30s for Persian-language outlet Iran International, was stabbed in the leg in the mid-afternoon attack outside his home in Wimbledon, southwest London, on 29 March.
He returned to work at the dissident broadcaster the following month, insisting that “the show must go on”.
The counter terrorism unit of London’s Metropolitan Police led the investigation, given previous hostile threats by Iran against perceived opponents in Britain.
At the time, Iran International noted that the attack had come after Tehran was implicated in a plot to kill two of its television anchors in 2022.
A spokesman for the channel said its journalists and their families and others had been repeatedly targeted and threatened by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).
Iran’s charge d’affaires in the UK has said that the Tehran authorities “deny any link” to the incident.
The Met, as London’s police force is known, has disrupted what it has called plots in the UK to kidnap or even kill British or Britain-based individuals perceived as enemies of Tehran.
An Austrian national was convicted in December last year of spying for a group that may have been preparing to attack Iran International.
The Iranian government has declared the outlet a terrorist organisation after it reported on protests sparked by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini.
She died in 2022 after her arrest in Tehran for an alleged breach of the Islamic republic’s strict dress code for women.
