2 men appear in court accused of ‘hostile’ surveillance of U.K.’s Jewish community for Iran

People walk along the bank of the River Thames in London, Wednesday, Jan. 25, 2023. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

LONDON -- Two men appeared in a London court on Thursday accused of carrying out “hostile” surveillance last year of the U.K.’s Jewish community on behalf of Iran.

Iranian-British national Nematollah Shahsavani, 40, and 22-year-old Iranian citizen Alireza Farasati are accused of engaging in conduct likely to assist a foreign intelligence service between July 9 and Aug. 15 last year.

Prosecution lawyer Louise Attrill said the defendants “are suspected of assisting the Iranian intelligence service by conducting hostile surveillance of locations and individuals linked to the Israeli and Jewish community.”

She told a hearing at Westminster Magistrates’ Court that surveillance targets included the Israeli embassy in London, a Jewish community center, a college and Britain’s oldest synagogue.

Neither defendant was asked to enter a plea during the hearing, but Farasati’s lawyer said he intends to fight the charge.

Chief Magistrate Paul Goldspring ordered both men to be detained until their next hearing at London’s Central Criminal Court on April 17.

The men, who both live in London, were arrested March 6. Two other British-Iranian nationals arrested as part of the same investigation have been released without charge.

Ken McCallum, head of Britain’s MI5 domestic intelligence service, said in October that more than 20 “potentially lethal Iran-backed plots” had been disrupted in the previous 12 months.

The Associated Press