A UK-based Iranian TV channel has had to stop broadcasting from its headquarters in London, after British police warned staff that it could not protect them on UK soil.
Iran International has been advised to relocate from London to Washington DC by UK counterterrorism specialists, following a string of foiled plots to target the channel’s journalists.
These include an incident last weekend reported by the Times in which an Austrian national flew into the UK and was allegedly caught filming outside the channel’s premises in west London, where around 100 staff work.
Mahmood Enayat, the channel’s general manager, said in a statement: “I cannot believe it has come to this. A foreign state has caused such a significant threat to the British public on British soil that we have to move.
“Let’s be clear, this is not just a threat to our TV station, but [to] the British public at large. This is an assault on the values of sovereignty and free speech that the UK has always held dear.”
! function(f, b, e, v, n, t, s)
if (f.fbq) return;
n = f.fbq = function()
n.callMethod ? n.callMethod.apply(n, arguments) : n.queue.push(arguments)
;
if (!f._fbq) f._fbq = n;
n.push = n;
n.loaded = !0;
n.version = ‘2.0’;
n.queue = [];
t = b.createElement(e);
t.async = !0;
t.src = v;
s = b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];
s.parentNode.insertBefore(t, s)
(window, document, ‘script’, ‘
fbq(‘init’, ‘422369225140645’);
fbq(‘track’, ‘PageView’);
