Iran turns to Hells Angels and other criminal gangs to tackle critics

Iran has linked up with criminal networks in the West to carry out a recent wave of violent plots in the United States and Europe.

24 minutes

(Rob Dobi for The Washington Post)

By Greg Miller, Souad Mekhennet and Cate Brown

September 12, 2024 at 5:00am EDT

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/09/12/iran-criminal-gangs-target-dissidents/

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LONDON — In the months before his attackers tracked him down, the exiled Iranian journalist was shuttled in and out of safe houses by London’s Metropolitan Police, given a secret way to signal rescue units and had surveillance equipment installed in his home.

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Police sent a team of undercover agents to protect the station’s employees. Police also arrested a suspect who was guarding the station’s entrances. Police also placed armored vehicles outside the station’s headquarters and convinced the station to temporarily relocate to Washington for seven months last year.

None of these measures succeeded in protecting Zeraati from the plot Iran has been accused of this year. On March 29, he was stabbed four times and left bleeding on the pavement outside his home in the London suburb of Wimbledon by assailants who were not from Iran and had no discernible connection to the security services, British investigators said.

Instead, officials said, Iran hired criminals in Eastern Europe who faced few obstacles as they cleared security at Heathrow Airport, spent days tracking Zeraati and then hit departing flights just hours after carrying out an ambush that their victim survived — possibly deliberately, investigators said, to serve as a warning but not to cause the consequences that would flow from killing a British citizen.

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