Iran International journalists Mojtaba Pourmohsen and Kambiz Hosseini were among the targets of the alleged surveillance operation, prosecutors told Woolwich Crown Court.
“Together, the defendants were engaged in what is very obviously a form of spying,” prosecutor William Emlyn Jones KC told jurors.
Mostafa Sepahvand, 41, Farhad Javadi Manesh, 46, and Shapoor Qalehali Khani Noori, 57, are accused of conducting months of surveillance and reconnaissance, including photographing and filming locations connected to their targets.
All three are charged with assisting a foreign intelligence service under Britain’s National Security Act 2023. Prosecutors say the foreign intelligence service was Iranian.
Sepahvand is also accused of conducting surveillance, reconnaissance and open-source research intending to carry out serious violence against a person in Britain. Javadi Manesh and Noori are accused of conducting surveillance and reconnaissance intending that serious violence would be carried out by someone else.
“It is the prosecution case that their ultimate objective was that one or more of their targets would be subjected to serious violence,” Jones told the jury.
The prosecution says Sepahvand was intended to carry out the violence himself, with Javadi Manesh and Noori gathering information to assist the planning of an attack.
The three men were arrested in May 2025 and are the first Iranian nationals charged under the National Security Act, which came into force in 2023.
Phones reveal surveillance operation
Prosecutors presented on Tuesday an outline of the evidence regarding the surveillance of Pourmohsen and Hosseini.
“These three defendants were carrying out surveillance and reconnaissance to locate and target at least two journalists associated with news agency Iran International,” Jones said.
The surveillance was intended to establish where targets lived and worked, their routines, the people they spent time with and the layouts of buildings connected to them, according to the prosecution.
Material recovered from Sepahvand’s phone included searches seeking Pourmohsen’s address. One search asked ChatGPT for “Mojtaba Pour Mohsen’s address,” according to evidence presented in court.
ChatGPT did not provide a home address but returned information about his career and social media contacts and suggested contacting him through Iran International, jurors were told.
Investigators also recovered from Sepahvand’s phone what prosecutors described as a briefing document or “targeting package” containing Pourmohsen’s photograph and information about locations associated with him.
The material included the address of Volant Media, Iran International’s parent company, and information about the Clayton Hotel on Chiswick High Road.
Pourmohsen had stayed at the hotel around Christmas 2024 after developing security concerns about his home address, Jones told jurors.
Prosecutors also presented photographs and videos of Malthouse Court, where Pourmohsen had lived between 2019 and 2023.
The defendants appeared not to know that Pourmohsen had already moved away, according to the prosecution.
Location data and videos
Cell-site data placed Sepahvand and Javadi Manesh in the Malthouse Court area on December 10, 2024, prosecutors said.
Data from a SIM card installed in Sepahvand’s Mercedes A200 also placed the vehicle in the area, according to evidence presented to the jury.
Javadi Manesh later sent Sepahvand photographs and videos of Malthouse Court that prosecutors say were recorded during the visit.
One video played to jurors began with a view of the river before moving toward the block of flats and zooming in.
Location data also placed Sepahvand and Noori in the Malthouse Court area on December 16, prosecutors said.
The prosecution had begun addressing the surveillance of Hosseini by the latest court update.
Sepahvand says he acted under pressure
The defendants contest crucial elements of the prosecution case in different ways.
Sepahvand accepts carrying out surveillance and reconnaissance and that he was doing so for the benefit of Iran, according to the prosecution’s account of his defence.
His position is that he did not want to carry out the activity and acted because he feared the consequences of refusing. Sepahvand also maintains that he deliberately did a poor job so the Iranian intelligence service would not receive the assistance it wanted, Jones told jurors.
The prosecution disputes that account.
“We suggest you will find nothing in any of these messages that is, or looks or even feels like, a threat to Sepahvand,” Jones said.
Javadi Manesh and Noori accept visiting relevant locations and taking photographs and videos but maintain that they did not know they were doing so to assist Iranian intelligence services, according to the prosecution’s description of their cases.
Jurors will have to consider whether they knew what the activity was intended to achieve or whether the circumstances meant they reasonably ought to have known, Jones said.
Messages presented to jury
The prosecution also took jurors through communications recovered from Sepahvand’s phone involving two Iranian telephone numbers.
One belonged to a man identified as Mostafa Ghorbani. Another was saved in Sepahvand’s phone as “Amin Mostafa’s friend.”
Both contacts appeared repeatedly in Sepahvand’s phone activity, prosecutors said.
In a December 8 exchange with Ghorbani presented in court, Sepahvand discussed information he had been sent about a person and location.
“It’s a tourist area, look. They got these [from] Iran, someone said he/she/it is here. They also sent me these few pictures from the Internet. I said ‘okay, I’ll go’, if he/she/it wasn’t there it’s their own problem,” Sepahvand wrote in a translated message read to the jury.
The following day, Sepahvand discussed plans to visit a location with the contact saved as Amin, according to the prosecution.
“I’ll definitely go tomorrow,” Sepahvand wrote.
Prosecutors say “tomorrow” referred to December 10, when location data subsequently placed Sepahvand and Manesh near Malthouse Court.
Amin responded with messages including “God willing you’ll see him/her/it” and “it’ll be sorted,” according to translations presented in court.
The prosecution argues the exchanges undermine Sepahvand’s position that he carried out the work because he had been threatened.
Jones also told jurors that some communications referred to Sepahvand being paid for his work.
Prosecutors say Sepahvand also wanted help resolving a criminal conviction in Iran. The jury was told that the conviction itself was not evidence against him and should not be held against him, but prosecutors consider his efforts to resolve it relevant to his motivation.
Another target
The surveillance outlined by prosecutors extended beyond Iran International.
Material exchanged between Sepahvand and Javadi Manesh included information about Jonathan Turner, a founder of UK Lawyers for Israel, the court heard.
Two aerial images sent by Sepahvand to Javadi Manesh in August 2024 showed addresses connected to UK Lawyers for Israel and Turner’s barristers’ chambers, prosecutors said.
The prosecution says the material relates to another person who had attracted the attention of Iranian intelligence services for reasons different from the journalists.
The majority of the evidence on which prosecutors will rely comes from material obtained from the defendants’ mobile phones following their arrests, Jones told jurors.
The indictment accuses Sepahvand, Javadi Manesh and Noori of engaging between August 14, 2024 and February 16, 2025 in conduct likely to assist a foreign intelligence service carrying out UK-related activities, knowing or reasonably being expected to know that their conduct was likely to provide material assistance.
The case is being heard by Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb and is expected to last six to eight weeks, with the prosecution expected to spend about two weeks presenting its case.
The prosecution’s opening has begun laying out the digital trail at the center of its case, including searches for a journalist’s address, photographs and videos of locations connected to him, location records and messages discussing visits to those locations.
The jury will ultimately decide what the three men knew about the purpose of the surveillance and whether prosecutors prove it was intended to assist Iranian intelligence services and prepare for serious violence against journalists in Britain.