A lost photographer in a Chiswick business park, a nervous phone caller in LA and a speedboat bound for Caracas – who exactly are the hit men behind the threats?
Why this story
London prides itself as an open, liberal, tolerant, global city. But there is a darker side to this. It’s also where authoritarian regimes and their enemies fight it out.
It’s where Russia’s Vladimir Putin, in all likelihood, approved an operation to poison one of his critics with polonium in a Mayfair hotel. And it’s where Iran tries to silence its critics too.
“Iran projects threat to the UK directly, through its aggressive intelligence services. At its sharpest this includes ambitions to kidnap or even kill British or UK-based individuals perceived as enemies of the regime. We have seen at least ten such potential threats since January alone”.
This was the Director General of MI5, Ken McCallum, speaking towards the end of last year. We now know that the number of threats from Iran is much higher.
In particular, the Iranian government targets its critics – often London-based journalists – working for TV news channels which broadcast in Persian back to Iran. Things have got so bad that Iran International, a TV channel based in west London, has had to suspend its operations in the UK.
The threats seem to have ramped up because of the nationwide protests following the death in police custody last September of Mahsa Amini. She was arrested by the morality police for not wearing her headscarf correctly and died in mysterious circumstances three days later.
So who are the people behind these attacks and how effective are their efforts to silence critics of the regime in Tehran? Paul Caruana Galizia investigates.
Past reporting
- Listen
- Read
- Watch
Iran: a new revolution?
Join us as we’ll be exploring recent developments in Iran, covering everything from protests and media coverage, to international and geopolitical perspectives.
A ThinkIn on Iran with Jack Straw and Richard Ratcliffe
Making sense of Londongrad, with Paul Caruana-Galizia
What does the story of the oligarchs say about Britain?
Should the UK change sides in the Gulf: Saudi to Iran?
How the Lebedevs partied their way to power
The Lebedevs’ ascent reveals how easy it was for Britain to be bought
Horror without spin
The election of Ebrahim Raisi as Iranian president does not mark a return to darker days but a more brazen declaration of the character – and terrible crimes – of this theocratic state
The state of Iran
How a prison came to stand for a state
Inside Evin
The prison that Iran built for itself
Explore the prison
Voices of Evin: Ramin Jahanbegloo
A renowned Iranian philosopher, Jahanbegloo was arrested in 2006 on the way to a conference in Brussels. He was kept in the solitary cells of Evin Prison’s Section 209 for four months, accused of plotting a non-violent revolution in Iran
Voices of Evin: Marina Nemat
Nemat was arrested in 1982 after criticising the regime of Iran’s first Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. She spent more than two years in Evin Prison, enduring torture and a forced marriage to her interrogator
Voices of Evin: Ana Diamond
Diamond, who now lives in London, was arrested on unproven spying charges in January 2016 outside her Tehran apartment. Diamond was sentenced to the death penalty and spent eight months in Evin Prison under the control of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Her father was in Evin for two years
Voices of Evin: Esha Momeni
In 2009 Momeni, then a student, was arrested while driving to Tehran to interview someone for her thesis on women’s rights in Iran. She was taken to solitary confinement in Section 209 of Evin Prison, and detained for around a month
Voices of Evin: Nasrin Parvaz
Parvaz was part of a wave of youth who fought for change after the Islamic Revolution. In 1982, aged 23, she was betrayed by a comrade, detained in Evin Prison and sentenced to death. She spent eight years in the Iranian prison system
Voices of Evin: Maryam Rostampour & Marziyeh Amirizadeh
Rostampour and Amirizadeh were detained in Evin Prison in 2009 after being caught proselytising in Tehran: they had distributed thousands of Bibles in the capital, and set up two secret house churches. They were kept in the Iranian prison system for about eight-and-a-half months
Voices of Evin: Maryam Zaree
Zaree was born in Evin Prison in 1983. She only found out when she was 12. Now a filmmaker and actress living in Germany, last year she made a documentary called Born in Evin investigating the circumstances of her birth
‘Escape isn’t a possibility’: paintings of Evin
Activist Nasrin Parvaz’s haunting artworks reveal glimpses of life inside Iran’s most notorious prison
Evin and Iran: further reading
Nazanin: Trapped in Whitehall
Since 2016, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has been held hostage in Iran. Her supporters recognise that the Iranian government must be held responsible for her ordeal, but missteps and machinations in London have ensured that it hasn’t been brought to a swift end
Episode 1: The advance party
Britain prides itself on being impregnable; a country which hasn’t been invaded for 1000 years and can’t be bought. The Lebedevs give the lie to all that. They spent a lot, but not a fortune, buying their way into British public life. And they did it in a way which perhaps nobody had tried before: they amused the people who mattered
Episode 2: The Royal Borough of Kensington and Moscow
The oligarchs who made their way to London in the early 2000s and changed it presented themselves as embodiments of the new Russia; members of the global elite, and arms-length beneficiaries of Vladimir Putin’s new order, not slaves to it. Those were the terms on which Britain let them in, but it was mugged
Episode 3: Project Venus
There comes a moment in any successful invasion of a country when you can no longer hide, your plans have to become obvious. It’s a moment of jeopardy but if you can get through it – as Alexander and Evgeny Lebedev did in Britain when they bought first the Evening Standard and later The Independent – then the scale of your ambitions can shift dramatically
Episode 4: Doubling down
Years of warnings about Russia’s intentions had gone unheeded; discounted as scaremongering. But then came the invasion of Crimea, and the end of any doubts. In spite of it all, the Lebedevs’ ascent in London continued, and so did the extraordinary parties
Episode 5: A blind eye
The Intelligence and Security Committee of the British Parliament produced a report into Russian interference in British democracy. Boris Johnson saw it before his general election landslide in 2019. But his government went out of its way to make sure it didn’t see the light of day until long after the election had been fought and won
Episode 6: Lord of the spies
It’s no secret that political patronage can get you a place in the House of Lords. But even people who understand the system well – even peers themselves – were appalled when Boris Johnson decided to extend his patronage to Evgeny Lebedev.
Londongrad: The Johnson Affair
A former KGB officer, Britain’s foreign secretary – and a potential national security breach