Dissident Iranian journalist Niyak Ghorbani was assaulted during a march in London calling for the release of the Israeli hostages being held by Hamas.
The assailant, on Sunday, threw the contents of a bottle at him, charged at him, and was seen grabbing Ghorbani around the neck, in a moment captured by photographers. The liquid in the bottle had a “foul smell,” he wrote in a post on X/Twitter, confirming the incident.
“The only thing I could think to do was to grip his collar tightly so he couldn’t get away. As my vision darkened, and I was on the verge of blacking out, his female companion, seeing that I would not let go, began clawing at my neck and body,” Ghorbani recalled after the assailant began choking him.
His attacker was seen being dragged away by police, according to the Metro report.
Ghorbani said that two other people attacked him at that point. “In that moment, all three of them attacked me from different directions. I couldn’t clearly see where they were hitting me because my sight was fading,” he wrote.
“I just kept hold of the T-shirt of the man strangling me, waiting for someone to pull him off me. Eventually, CST officers and members of the public intervened, dragged him back, and, fortunately, the police arrested him,” he continued.
Ghorbani highlighted the severity of the attack, adding that he felt like he “truly looked death in the eye and came back from it.” He believes the attackers deliberately targeted him.
Ghorbani's past activism
Ghorbani has been attacked while demonstrating in the past, holding signs saying that Hamas is a terrorist organization. He was arrested and later released for his activist activities.
Sarai Idan, former Miss Iraq and CEO of Humanity Forward, shared that Ghorbani had been rushed to the hospital following the attack.
Ghorbani left Iran in 2014 and has ever since been a vocal critic of the Islamic Republic. He praised the Israeli strikes on Iran in June in an interview with The Jerusalem Post, saying they were “everything the Iranian people have dreamed of for the past 46 years.”
He is an outspoken supporter of exiled crown prince Reza Pahlavi.