British police say they have charged three Iranians with suspected espionage for Iran’s intelligence services from August 2024 to February 2025.
The police said in a statement on Saturday that the three men were charged with offences under the National Security Act following a major counterterrorism investigation.
Mostafa Sepahvand, 39, Farhad Javadi Manesh, 44, and Shapoor Qalehali Khani Noori, 55, were accused of conduct likely to assist a foreign intelligence service between August 14, 2024, and February 16, 2025, the police said, adding that the foreign state to which the charges relate is Iran.
The three men are due to appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court later on Saturday.
Commander Dominic Murphy, from the Met’s Counter Terrorism Command, said the men were arrested two weeks ago. “These are extremely serious charges under the National Security Act, which have come about following what has been a very complex and fast-moving investigation,” he said.
Sepahvand was also charged with carrying out surveillance, reconnaissance and open-source research, intending to commit serious violence against someone in the United Kingdom, police and prosecutors said, while Manesh and Noori were also charged with engaging in surveillance and reconnaissance, with the intention that serious violence against someone in the UK would be carried out by others.
A fourth Iranian national, 31, who was also arrested and detained as part of the investigation, was released with no further action on Thursday.
The arrests took place on the same day that five other Iranians were detained by police as part of a separate counterterrorism probe, in what the UK’s Home Secretary Yvette Cooper called some of the biggest investigations of their kind in recent years.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi had previously said he was “disturbed” to learn that Iranian citizens had been arrested by the British authorities.
The UK has placed Iran on the highest tier of its Foreign Influence Registration Scheme (FIRS), which aims to boost the UK’s national security against covert foreign influences.
The measures, due to come into place later this year, will mean that all people working inside the UK for Iran, its intelligence services or the Revolutionary Guard would have to register or face jail.
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