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Security minister: Criminals are tracking British Jews for Iran’s killing squads

Tom Tugendhat told the JC, ‘Iran is targeting Jews. I do not issue these warnings lightly’

February 23, 2023 09:53
GettyImages-1241853961
LONDON, ENGLAND - JULY 12: Tom Tugendhat delivers his first speech of his Conservative Party leadership campaign on July 12, 2022 in London, England. Tugendhat is a senior backbench MP, elected for Tonbridge and Malling in 2015. He served in both Iraq and Afghanistan and has no ministerial experience. In order to stand in the Conservative leadership contest, candidates will need the backing of 20 MPs by tonight and 30 to pass the first ballot on Wednesday evening. (Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images)
4 min read

Iran is hiring organised criminals to spy on Britain’s Jews in preparation for a potential assassination campaign against prominent members of the community, Security Minister Tom Tugendhat told the JC.

Last week, we exposed how the regime is “mapping” Jews in the diaspora to lay the ground for high-profile revenge murders should Israel launch a military attack against the theocracy.

In response, the minister, who is responsible for MI5, said: “You were right. We have very clear intelligence about the activities of hostile regimes in the UK and we keep a very close eye on what their agents and those close to them are doing.

“We know that the Iranians are using non-traditional sources to carry out these operations, including organised criminal gangs.

“They are paying criminal gangs to conduct surveillance.

“Basically, the Iranians are using crooks based in Britain to spy for them.”

He added: “You can be very clear that I wouldn’t have mentioned Jewish and Israeli targets unless I had good reason to do so.

“I take all threats against anyone in the UK very seriously and the reason I highlighted Israelis and the Jewish community is that we have been seeing threats and Iranian operational activity directed against them. I do not issue these warnings lightly.”

Last week’s warning about the Iranian threat against diaspora communities came in an interview with a Jewish woman who had gone undercover to Tehran and met key figures in the Iranian regime. A series of visits to the country led to her meeting Ayatollah Khamenei himself.

French-born Catherine Perez-Shakdam, who lives in the UK, told the JC how she was told of the plan to map high-profile Jews to “make the diaspora pay a price” for any Israeli attack.

“The idea was to identify all the prominent NGOs run by Jews, who was doing what in each business sector, the important rabbis,” Perez-Shakdam, 41, said.

“They wanted to figure out their influence and where they lived with their families in order to target them.

“They wanted to have a better understanding so they would know how to strike and where, so that if Israel ever dared to attack Iran, the diaspora would have a very nasty surprise.”

Tugendhat said he could not comment on the sources of his briefings, nor give precise details of the intelligence they had gathered, but added that outside Britain, Iran was also using international criminal gangs to conduct surveillance of Jews and other targets in other Western countries.