Iran who uses criminal gangs for hit jobs abroad, showing lawsuits, show

There is a strong increase in suddenly due to the Iranian regime to abduct dissidents, journalists and political enemies who live abroad, according to reports from Western intelligence services.

These attempts have been escalated dramatically since 2022, with even US President Donald Trump under the so -called go. In the UK, The police interrogate a number of Iranians Arrested earlier this month on suspicion of planning a terrorist attack. The BBC understands that the alleged target was the Israeli embassy in London.

And judicial documents from Turkey and the US – seen by BBC Eye Investigations and BBC Persian – contain evidence that Iran has adopted criminal gangs to perform murders on foreign soil, accusations that the Iranian regime has previously denied. Iranian officials did not respond to a new request for a comment.

One name repeatedly emerged in these documents: Naji Sharifi Zindashti, an Iranian criminal boss, known for international drug smuggling.

His name appeared in a Turkish indictment in connection with the murder in 2017 in Istanbul from Saeed Karimian, the head of a Persian TV network that broadcasts Western films and programs to Iran.

The Iranian authorities regarded Karimian as a threat to the Islamic values, and three months before his murder an Islamic revolutionary court in Tehran in absence to six years in prison.

The American and Turkish officials believed that his death was related to a Mafia -Fete.

But when Massoud Molavi, a defector of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC), was shot in Istanbul in 2019, the alleged role of Zindashti in Karimian’s murder shed.

Molavi had exposed corruption to the highest levels of Iran’s leadership. The Turkish police discovered that Zindashti’s gardener had been present on the scene of Molavi’s murder and that his driver had been with Karimian’s murder.

The police suspected the gardener and the driver was sent by Zindashti.

Zindashti was arrested in connection with the death of Karimian, but was relevant in a controversially after only six months, which caused a legal scandal in Turkey. A higher judge judge ordered his Herinrest, but then he had left the country.

He then fled to Iran and raised suspicions that he may have worked for Iranian intelligence all the time.

Cengiz Erdinc, a Turkish investigative journalist, claims that when those from the grace are killed with the Iranian regime, the men of Zindashti are on site. “It is not the first time, but there has always been a connection between organized crime and the intelligence services,” he says.

More than three decades ago, he was convicted of drug smuggling in Iran and sentenced to death. But rumors suggested that his escape from prison, which led him to Turkey, was possibly orchestrated by Iranian intelligence.

“If someone was sentenced to death in Iran after killing a guard, it is unlikely that they make it alive – unless the story is more,” says someone who knew Zindashti well. The BBC remembers their identity for their own safety.

“The only plausible way for him to return and live freely would be if he had worked for the intelligence services of Iran, so that his escape is part of a planned cover story for intelligence work with Iran’s security agencies and IRGC,” she told BBC World Service.

In 2020, the name of Zindashti again appeared in a Turkish indictment in connection with the kidnapping of Habib Chaab, an Iranian dissident who was lured to Istanbul, abducted and later paraded on the Iranian state of TV.

Chaab was sentenced to death and executed. Zindashti’s cousin was arrested in Turkey in connection with the disappearance of Chaab. Zindashti has denied having a role.

Subsequently, Zindashti was involved in a conspiracy in the United States in 2021. According to the court documents of Minnesota, communication between Zindashti and a member of the Hells Angels, a Canadian motorcyclist, were registered in the indictment.

Zindashti reportedly offered $ 370,000 to have killed two Iranian defectors in Maryland. The FBI intervened and arrested two men before the attack could be carried out.

Our investigation into judicial documents has also discovered that the IRGC and its overseas Operations Arm, the QUS Force, have worked with criminal organizations such as the thieves, a notorious international criminal criminal gang from the former Soviet Union, to carry out abductions and murders.

The sources of the US and Israeli intelligence say that unit 840 of the most important responsibility of the IRGCs QUDS Force is to plan and establish terror infrastructure abroad.

In March, a jury in New York convicted two men associated with the thieves for planning Masih Alinejad, an Iranian American activist. Iranian agents are said to have offered $ 500,000 for her murder. Only two years earlier, a man with a loaded gun was arrested near her house in Brooklyn.

After the murder of 2020 by the US of Top IRGC commander -general Qasem Soleimani, Iran promised revenge. Since then, the US says that Iran is planning to kill former members of the Trump government involved in the death of Soleimani, including former national security adviser John Bolton, and Mike Pompeo, former head of the CIA and State Secretary.

During last year’s US

In response to these growing threats, the US and the UK have imposed sanctions on persons associated with the intelligence operations of Iran, including Zindashti, Iranian diplomats and members of the IRGC.

Zindashti once denies working for the Iranian intelligence service.

In 2024, Ken McCallum, the director of MI5, reported 20 credible threats against people in the UK linked to Iran.

In one case in West London, a Chechen man was arrested near Iran International, a TV station in Persian in London. He was convicted of collecting information for Iranian agents.

Last year Pouria Zerati, a London -based presenter for Iran International, was attacked with a knife. Shortly thereafter, two men were arrested in Romania at the request of the British terrorism fighting police.

Sources in the British security services told the BBC that these men were part of the thieves, reportedly hired by Iranian agents.

Sima Sabet, a presenter for Iran International, was one of the goals, but an attempt to blow up her car failed.

“When they realized that they could not confirm a bomb to my car, the agents told the man to take the job calmly,” says Sima, who saw the police, says. “He asked how quiet and they answered:” As quiet as a kitchen knife. “

After the murder of four Iranian Kurdish leaders by masked armed men in a restaurant in Berlin in 1992, the German prosecutors blamed the entire Iranian leadership for the murders. The attack was carried out by Iranian agents and members of the Lebanese Shia Hezbollah movement supported by Iran.

An international arrest warrant was issued for the Iran’s Minister of Intelligence and a court stated that the murder had been ordered with the knowledge of the supreme leader and president of Iran.

Since then it seems that the Iranian regime has adopted criminal organizations to carry out abductions and murders in an attempt to prevent the attacks being linked to the regime.

But Matt Jukes, the British head of the counter -police of terrorism, says that it is relatively easy for the police to infiltrate criminal groups because they are not ideologically tailored to the Iranian regime.

It is what he calls a “crawling penetration” by Iran, who is trying to disturb the police.