A Sweden-based campaigner has described how he survived an attempt to kill him by a teenage would-be assassin police believe was acting on the orders of Iran.
Arvin Khoshnood, 41, is an expert on Iran’s intelligence operations and security, as well as a critic of the Iranian regime. He believes he remains on the hit list.
Mr Khoshnood had first-hand experience of how Iran hires local young men to kill or maim its opponents when a 17-year-old turned up at his home with a knife last September.
On Thursday, a court in the town of Uddevalla, about 85 kilometres north Gothenburg, found the teenager guilty of attempted murder and jailed him for three years and nine months. Two other 17-year-olds were also convicted for helping to prepare the attempted murder.
Sweden’s security service Sapo and Israel have named Rawa Majid and Ismail Abdo, gangsters of Kurdish origin, as working for Iran to carry out attacks on Jewish, Israeli and Iranian opposition figures in Scandinavia.
They are suspected of using teenagers recruited online to carry out the work to provide Iran deniability. The US and the UK have placed Majid, who controls the Foxtrot criminal network, under sanction.
Now living in secrecy, Mr Khoshnood told The National what happened when the teenager arrived at his home.
The would-be assassin rang the intercom at around 8.45pm, after jumping over the security gate installed after Mr Khoshnood had received warnings that his life was at risk.
His wife answered and the teenager asked to speak to Mr Khoshnood, who was in the bathroom at the time. But he sensed something was not right and went upstairs to see who had arrived and saw a youth in an agitated state.
“I was very, very scared. I was prepared for a fight. I couldn't know if they were one or two people, what type of weapon they had,” he said.
“I had high pulse. I had feelings I never had before, but I tried to keep myself together, be focused, and not to scare my wife.
"It’s very hard to put into words. If he had seen me, he would probably have put the knife in my wife first and then tried to kill me.”
In his mind was the phenomenon, which has emerged during Sweden’s gang wars of recent years, of teenage criminals firing home-made grenades at rivals “So, I was thinking they might fire one through the window.”
The police arrived, by which time the teenager had fled after trying to get into the house by the back door.
Investigators found that the Iranian government had hired an alleged criminal named Dante Peykar to plan the hit.
Peykar, a 41-year-old Swedish-Iranian citizen, was last week added to the list of Europol’s most wanted suspects. The EU’s law enforcement agency said on its notice that he is suspected of attempted murder.
It emerged during the police investigation that an individual using the code name Tartarus, who had recruited the teenager, was Peykar, said Mr Khoshnood. According to reports Peykar is aligned with the Rumba network controlled by Abdo.
Based on what the police have told him, information Mr Khoshnood has received from friends and previous court cases, he believes that the wanted criminal is in Iran.
“I was told that Dante Peykar had offered 100,000 crowns ($10,600) if they had also killed my wife and Kr350,000 ($37,100) if they killed me.”
Mr Khoshnood believes “as long as the regime is in power in Iran, they will try to find me, and they will send the new guys, or maybe professional agents to take my life”.
“In the chats that the police found, there is actually a line where Dante Peykar says to these guys, 'It's very important that you don't make any mistakes, and you kill him, because if you don't, it will take a long time before we can find him again.'
“So, this is a very clear signal that they will come for me again. I'm on their terror list and I will remain there until they take my life, or until we Iranians can overthrow them and take over our institutions.”
Mr Khoshnood’s family was forced to leave Iran because of his father’s political views and sought asylum in Norway before settling in Sweden.
Other than naming Majid and Abdo, so far the Swedish government has not protested publicly to Iran about its activities.
"I'm still waiting for the Swedish government to react on the information regarding my case, and not only condemning the Islamic regime by word, but also in action, doing something to increase the cost of terrorism,” he said. "So, this quiet diplomacy, really doesn't work.
"A member of the European Parliament from Sweden said that the Swedish government should co-operate with the Israeli government, identify these criminals inside Iran and eliminate them. I think that is actually not a bad idea.”
In the meantime, Mr Khoshnood lives his isolated life looking over his shoulder and wondering when the next attempt on his life will come with even digital communication now “very, very limited”.
“Life is not easy. Everything we do, we consider security,” he said.
“Compared to our previous life we were very social, we had lots of friends, family come by almost every day. Our door was always open. But now, we don't meet people, we are totally isolated.”
