Two convicted over targeted knife attack on Iran International journalist

Two men have been convicted following a targeted knife attack on a journalist outside his home in south‑west London.

The jury heard prosecution evidence that the attack was planned, coordinated and funded, and that it formed part of what prosecutors said was a proxy operation linked to the Iranian state.

George Stana, 25, and Nandito Badea, 21, were convicted after a trial in which jurors heard how the journalist was attacked as he walked from his home to his car in Wimbledon on 29 March 2024.

The jury was told that the defendants acted as part of a three‑man team, alongside a third man, to carry out a planned stabbing. One attacker restrained the victim while the other stabbed him three times to the leg with a knife. The attackers then ran to a waiting car and fled the scene.

He was left seriously injured and bleeding and required emergency treatment at St George’s Hospital, where his wounds were closed with sutures.

The Crown Prosecution Service proved that the attack was not a robbery or spontaneous assault but the culmination of months of surveillance, planning and preparation. Prosecutors presented extensive CCTV footage, mobile phone and communications data, financial evidence, eyewitness testimony and travel records to show how the defendants targeted their victim, waited for him to emerge from his home, and executed the attack before immediately leaving the UK.

Read more: Crown Prosecution Service (UK)