BBC:

There has been a sharp rise in plots by the Iranian regime to kidnap or assassinate dissidents, journalists and political foes living abroad, according to reports by Western intelligence agencies.

These attempts have escalated dramatically since 2022, with even US President Donald Trump among the alleged targets. In the UK, police are questioning a number of Iranians arrested earlier this month on suspicion of planning a terrorist attack. The BBC understands the alleged target was the Israeli embassy in London.

And court documents from Turkey and the US - seen by BBC Eye Investigations and BBC Persian - contain evidence that Iran has been hiring criminal gangs to carry out killings on foreign soil, allegations the Iranian regime has previously denied. Iranian officials did not respond to a fresh request for a comment.

One name repeatedly surfaced 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 2017 killing in Istanbul of Saeed Karimian, the head of a Persian TV network that broadcast Western films and programmes to Iran.

Instagram Naji Sharifi Zindashti getting out of a carInstagram
Naji Sharifi Zindashti fled to Iran after being controversially released from custody in Turkey

Iranian authorities considered Karimian a threat to Islamic values, and three months before his assassination an Islamic Revolutionary Court in Tehran sentenced him in absentia to six years in prison.

US and Turkish officials believed his death was related to a mafia feud.

But when in 2019, Massoud Molavi, a defector from Iran's Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC), was gunned down in Istanbul, it shed light on Zindashti's alleged role in Karimian's assassination.

Molavi had been exposing corruption at the highest levels of Iran's leadership. The Turkish police discovered Zindashti's gardener had been present at the scene of Molavi's assassination, and that his driver had been at Karimian's murder.

The police suspected the gardener and the driver had been sent by Zindashti.

Zindashti was arrested in connection with Karimian's death but was controversially released after just six months, causing a legal scandal in Turkey. A Higher Court judge ordered his rearrest but by then he had left the country.

He then fled to Iran, raising suspicions that he might have been working for Iranian intelligence all along.

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