2 men jailed for stabbing an Iranian journalist in London in an attack blamed on Tehran

LONDON (AP) — Two Romanian men were sentenced Friday to eight and 12 years in prison over the stabbing of a journalist from a Persian-language television station, an attack the judge said was carried out on behalf of the Iranian state.

Pouria Zeraati, a presenter at London-based Iran International, was stabbed in the leg in March 2024 outside his home in the Wimbledon area of London.

Nandito Badea, 21, and George Stana, 25, were found guilty by a jury last month of wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm.

Judge Bobbie Cheema-Grubb said the “evidence overwhelmingly points” to the attack being carried out on behalf of the Iranian authorities.

“I am sure that this was an attack carried out for and for the benefit of a foreign power,” she said during a sentencing hearing at London's Central Criminal Court

U.K. security officials claim Iran is behind a growing number of plots on British soil in which criminal proxies have targeted opposition media outlets and the Jewish community.

The satellite news channel Iran International has previously received threats due to coverage critical of Iran’s theocratic government. Zeraati was a high-profile face on the channel, and prosecutors said a billboard of his face had been seen in the Iranian capital with a “Wanted: Dead or Alive” message.

In 2023 the broadcaster temporarily moved to studios in Washington, D.C., after what it described as an escalation of “state-backed threats from Iran.” The station later resumed operations at a new location in London.

Police said former professional soccer player Badea and another man attacked Zeraati before fleeing in a getaway car driven by Stana and then flying out of the country from Heathrow Airport. Badea and Stana were arrested in Romania in December 2024 and extradited to the U.K. The third suspect, David Andrei, is the subject of criminal proceedings in Romania.

The judge said that Stana should have known that the “targeted and serious” attack was on behalf of Iran and gave him a 12-year sentence. Badea, who was involved in the conspiracy for less time, was handed eight years’ imprisonment.

Iran’s senior diplomat in the U.K. has denied Tehran was behind the attack.

Zeraati recovered from the attack and returned to work but said in a victim impact statement that the incident had left him “scared and anxious” and he had to relocate abroad “for fear of any reprisals.”

Chief Superintendent Kris Wright of Counter Terrorism Policing London said “it was our case that this targeted and violent attack on a journalist was carried out on behalf of the Iranian regime, and the judge agreed with that assessment of the evidence.

“Our message to anyone being asked to carry out activity by foreign states or even unknown entities online is to think again, because you will be caught and you will face justice," he said.

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

An Iranian proxy group has claimed credit for a recent string of suspected antisemitic attacks that have included stabbings and attempted fire bombings at synagogues.

FILE - The statue of Lady Justice stands on top of the Old Bailey court in morning mist in London, March 3, 2021. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham, File)

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A three-armed spacecraft rocketed into orbit Friday to rescue a NASA telescope that’s in danger of crashing back to Earth.

Northrop Grumman launched Katalyst Space Technologies’ Link spacecraft from the Marshall Islands in the Pacific. The Pegasus rocket blasted off from the belly of a modified airplane, putting Link on course to reach and capture NASA’s Swift Observatory in about a month.

Launched in 2004, Swift is sinking faster than ever because of recent solar storms. NASA is paying $30 million for Katalyst to capture the telescope and boost its orbit so it can continue tracking some of the biggest explosions in the universe, like gamma ray bursts and exploding stars.

If all goes well, Swift could be back scanning the cosmos by September. Observations are currently on hold to preserve the telescope’s orbit as long as possible.

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope could be a candidate for a similar salvage operation in a few years. It’s also slipping in altitude because of increased atmospheric drag caused by the sun’s outbursts.

The 1.6-ton (1.4-metric ton) Swift currently is circling 224 miles (360 kilometers) above Earth. Katalyst aims to raise the telescope’s altitude by 150 miles (240 kilometers), back to where it all began. Link’s thrusters will fire to boost Swift slowly, so there's no heavy jostling.

Katalyst threw the mission together in just nine months. NASA insisted on a rush job because the telescope will be too low to recover by the fall. Without a boost, it’s predicted to plunge to its demise in October.

Bad weather and technical issues caused a series of last-minute launch delays.

“This is a high-risk, high-reward mission,” Katalyst Space CEO Ghonhee Lee said ahead of liftoff. “The biggest danger was always we don’t launch anything and we let Swift burn up in the atmosphere. So we were always trying to avoid that risk, and our team has done that.”

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This photo provided by NASA shows Kieran Wilson, LINK’s principal investigator, and Hunter Robertson, a space systems engineer, both at Katalyst Space, standing next to their spacecraft inside the SES (Space Environment Simulator) at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., April 17, 2026, ahead of thermal vacuum testing. (Sophia Roberts/NASA via AP)