Chiswick Business Park Terror Scout Released from Prison

Dovtaev admitted being paid 50,000 euros to carry out mission

Dovtaev being arrested in the Starbucks in Chiswick Business Park. Picture: Met Police

May 1, 2026

A man convicted of carrying out hostile surveillance on a Persian-language television channel based in Chiswick has been freed from prison more than a year early. Documents obtained by the Sunday Times reveal that he told the Parole Board that he was offered €50,000 (£43,347) for the operation.

Magomed-Husejn Dovtaev, 33, was jailed in December 2023 for three and a half years after being found guilty of attempting to collect information useful for terrorism. He has since been deported to his native Austria, where authorities have indicated they will take no further action against him. The Board determined that he had no extremist affiliations and had issues with drugs and alcohol at the time of the offence and had acted out of greed.

Dovtaev, a Chechen-born Austrian, had booked a last-minute Wizz Air flight from Vienna to Gatwick on the evening of February 10, 2023, arriving the following morning. On landing, he drank up to four pints of beer in under an hour at a Wetherspoons pub in the terminal before taking a minicab directly to the office development, paying €150 in cash for the fare. During the journey he asked the driver about meeting women in London, giving little indication of his true purpose.

On arrival at the business park, Dovtaev pulled on a surgical face mask and cap before beginning to film the security arrangements outside Building 11 — the headquarters of Iran International, a Saudi-funded broadcaster that the Tehran regime had designated a terrorist organisation and placed on a state television "terror blacklist." British security services had previously warned the channel's staff that they were being targeted.

His suspicious behaviour quickly attracted the attention of private security guards, who alerted police. Dovtaev was arrested at gunpoint in a nearby Starbucks. Analysis of his phone later revealed he had researched the site before travelling, viewing maps and photographs of the building, and had received footage taken by other unidentified individuals at the same location in the weeks and months prior to his visit, shared via an encrypted messaging app.

At his trial at the Old Bailey, Dovtaev offered a series of shifting explanations for his presence. He told the jury he had simply been struck by the architecture and filmed a video to show his three children. He also claimed he had travelled to confront Russian fraudsters who had swindled his father out of €20,000, and separately said he had been set up by an unnamed contact. The jury rejected all of his accounts and convicted him unanimously.

A Parole Board hearing on 19 March this year directed his early release after concluding he no longer posed a risk to the public. In that hearing, Dovtaev admitted he had been offered the €50,000 payment, though didn’t confirm it came from an Iranian source, and acknowledged that his reconnaissance could have been a precursor to a terrorist attack, though he claimed he had given no thought to the consequences at the time. The board concluded he had acted out of "greed, a desire for excitement and recklessness" rather than any ideological or religious motivation. Iran International suspended its British operations in the wake of his arrest, later resuming broadcasting from a different location.

His case has taken on fresh significance amid a recent string of arson attacks in north London, including attempted fire bombings of synagogues and vehicles belonging to a Jewish charity. Counterterrorism police are examining whether those incidents may also involve "thugs for hire" recruited online by Iranian intelligence, though one source suggested those involved may have been offered considerably less — "hundreds, rather than thousands of pounds."

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer described the use of criminal proxies by hostile states as "a growing concern" on Thursday, singling out Russia and Iran as countries employing the tactic to maintain deniability. Security minister Dan Jarvis cited Dovtaev's case in parliament as recently as last Monday, apparently unaware or unable to disclose that he had already been granted parole.

The case is being compared to that of Dylan Earl, 21, jailed for 17 years last October after accepting £9,000 from the Wagner Group to carry out an arson attack on a London business supporting Ukraine — the first prosecution under the National Security Act, which carries significantly heavier penalties than the legislation under which Dovtaev was charged.