00:00Today's sentence and equally as importantly the judge's comments are incredibly important for us.
00:06To be able to hear from her that the prosecution case that we exerted all the way through,
00:11that this, as she described, cowardly attack, was task-coordinated and on behalf of a foreign body,
00:18namely the Iranian regime, is incredibly important.
00:21And the sentences that she's apportioned accordingly are equally a message.
00:25Iran international journalist Porya Zariati was left bleeding in the streets
00:30after being stabbed three times outside his home in Wimbledon on the 29th of March 2024.
00:37At the Old Bailey on Friday, the judge said that the evidence overwhelmingly points
00:42to the attack being carried out on behalf of the Iranian regime.
00:46Following the sentencing, Foreign Secretary Ms Cooper said for anyone to act on behalf of Iran
00:52and to plan and carry out an attack on a journalist on British soil is deplorable.
00:58So the jury in this case found that both of the defendants were guilty of GBH,
01:06a grievous bodily harm, with intent to commit that serious crime.
01:09The additional evidence that we presented in court is under the National Security Act,
01:15and the judge needs to be satisfied that we have presented sufficient evidence
01:20to demonstrate a link to that tasking and coordination of an overseas regime.
01:25Reaching that threshold is incredibly difficult,
01:28and it's only through the painstaking work of the investigators
01:30that we were able to do that today, and the sentences reflect that.
01:34We see across a lot of our casework hostile reconnaissance or the pre-planning activities
01:41happening more and more, whether that be in preparation for an attack
01:47like we have heard about in the court today,
01:49or whether that be a longer-term plan around our city structures and possible targets.
01:56We do see reconnaissance as a key repeated theme in our casework.
02:00Look, reconnaissance is all about patterns of behaviour.
02:05It's the work of counter-terror policing and our policing partners
02:08to educate venues, to educate individuals what doesn't look right,
02:13what doesn't look normal, who's the person that's been hanging around for so long,
02:17and what to do about it, who to tell.
02:19Today's sentence sends a message to two distinct groups for me.
02:24To the Iranian regime, it sends a message that in open court,
02:28a judge has declared that there is evidence to prove that you have tried to exert violence
02:35and intimidation within our democracies, and that won't be tolerated.
02:40And the message to the criminals for hire is promises will be made of money,
02:45of support for what might, in your mind, be low-level criminal activities,
02:51but those promises will fall away when you're caught, because we will come for you,
02:54we will catch you, we will prosecute you to the furthest degree of the law that we can.
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