On January 7, Mostafa Sepahvand’s sentence in Iran was reduced to three years and nine months, along with 74 lashes as a discretionary punishment.

Iranian agents, however, complained that Sepahvand had failed to complete the assignment.

In a message to his friend Mostafa Ghorbani in Iran, he said: ‘Brother, it was meant to be one address, but I went to three. It was meant to take one week, but I spent three weeks on it.’

Two Iranian intelligence contacts, known as Haji and Amin, later visited Ghorbani’s home. According to Sepahvand, ‘all they would talk about was that issue – who pocketed the money for whom?’

Sepahvand told him: ‘I swear on my mother’s life, if they put him in my hands, I’ll finish him off, but he isn’t there.’

‘They gave me £3,900, bro. Which fool would take on this kind of job for that money? Brother, by God, if I had stabbed this guy, they wouldn’t have paid me anything. They’re liars.’

In a voice note sent to Ghorbani on February 24 last year, Sepahvand said: ‘We’ve ended up dealing with a bunch of idiots. They send photographs based on nothing and tell me, “Find him”, but I don’t know how I’m supposed to find him.’

He continued: ‘All these addresses are useless. It doesn’t matter to me because I get paid. I’ll go wherever they tell me; I have no problem with that, however they want it and whenever they want it. What else can I say?

‘If they want, I’ll record a video. If they want, I’ll send photographs, so they can’t say tomorrow that I didn’t do it. They know themselves that it’s nonsense, but they won’t admit it.’

In another voice note, he said: ‘The way Amin talks, you’d think he was in London. That attitude gets on my nerves. He says, “He is there 100 per cent.”

‘Brother, I swear they didn’t get any further than Dargah, yet they make it sound as though they know every street and back alley in the area.

‘They’re talking complete f**king nonsense. They watch too many crime films. They sit behind a computer and carry out a few Google searches.’

On February 26, Sepahvand told Ghorbani he still had not received the promised pardon. ‘Brother, I haven’t received any ruling from these people. I need to see something with my own eyes. Right now, I’m going around handling their business.

‘Wherever you tell me to go, I’m at your service. I’ll even ask my own people to do it. I swear on the Koran and on my father’s soul, let us find him and pay him a visit. There is nothing I’d like more than to see him.’

Two days later, on February 28, Ghorbani told Sepahvand that he was with Haji and Amin and that his case had been ‘closed for another four months, and you won’t receive a prison sentence either.’

Ghorbani promised: ‘Once the job is done, the case will be over. They’ll even get you a house, and when you arrive at the airport, they’ll collect you from the gate themselves. They also said they would pay the fine.’

But he added: ‘You’ll have to find him using your own money.’

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On March 20, Sepahvand sent Ghorbani another lengthy voice note, again expressing his frustration with Amin, the intelligence contact.

‘Go and tell Amin that he’s still a kid. I’ve travelled all over the world, so he shouldn’t try to fool me.’

He said he had been told a house was under ‘non-physical surveillance’, but added: ‘You use GPS to pull up photographs and then think you’re dealing with a f**king idiot.’

Sepahvand said he feared being caught and added: ‘I’ve told you a hundred times that these addresses are wrong.

‘Besides that, it seems these people don’t even understand what offence they’re asking someone to commit. They’re deliberately turning a blind eye to it. If I’m caught here, that’s it. I’ll have to say goodbye.’

He also said he had been promised that his court case would be resolved and that he would receive £150,000 after completing the assignment and being shown the target. ‘They haven’t given me any of that either,’ Sepahvand said.

‘I’m not their errand boy, to be sent from one address to another. For God’s sake, when someone is being hired for a job, they pay him first. I’m not going there to work as a labourer.

‘This job involves committing a criminal offence. Given the seriousness of it, I’m expected to spend my own money, risk my life, use my car, sacrifice my time, leave my wife and home, and chase after their business, only to end up completely f**ked because of them.’

He accused Haji and Amin of ‘sitting there smoking shisha while I chase after their empty, suspicious addresses – their bogus, worthless, two-bit addresses.’

Sepahvand demanded: ‘From now on, tell them to send the money. Not £1,000, not £5,000 and not £6,000. They must transfer at least £10,000. Understood?

‘They’ve damaged my reputation with my friends as well. They think I’ve been paid £30,000 or £40,000. They have no idea that I’m continuing with this simply because of friendship.’

He said the agents had sent him ‘one address after another’ and were asking him to carry out ‘something that amounts to a criminal offence and carries a lengthy prison sentence.’

If the money was transferred, he said he would ‘go there and stand outside. If the target is inside, they pay the £150,000 and I’ll finish him off. Once they have the money ready and have transferred it, I’ll do the job.’

Sepahvand said ‘the problem is that we have a f**king big heart’, but added that ‘even friendship has its limits.’

‘These people transfer trillions and trillions to Syria and all sorts of other places, but when it comes to something connected to their own business, they refuse to pay. This isn’t right anymore. They’re taking advantage of me,’ Sepahvand said.

On April 25, he sent another message: ‘If my court ruling comes through, if I receive an acquittal, I’m at their service.

‘I’ve already done so much work for them, and I’ll complete the rest as well, all right? I’ll continue pursuing their business. There is nothing I’d like more than to see him. I swear on my father’s soul and by the Prophet, I would love nothing more than to see him. Of course, if my ruling comes through, I’ll do it.’

Scientists say they have identified the source of a mysterious radio signal that flashes on and off every eight minutes.

Using a powerful radio telescope, researchers from Curtin University traced the precisely timed pulses to an unusual binary star system more than 10,000 light-years from Earth.

Known as GPM J071507-114153, the system contains a dead star called a white dwarf and a G-type star that closely resembles the Sun.

The object belongs to a rare group known as long-period transients, which produce powerful radio pulses at intervals ranging from minutes to hours.

Only around a dozen long-period transients have been identified since the class was first discovered in 2021, and astronomers are still working to determine how they form.

The latest finding is the first evidence of radio pulses coming from a white dwarf orbiting a Sun-like star.

Astronomers have previously detected pulsing radio signals in systems containing white dwarfs. However, they could not establish which of the two stars was producing the emissions.

Lead author Dr Sam McSweeney, a commissioning scientist with the Square Kilometre Array Observatory radio telescope, said: ‘This is the first time the pulses are clear enough to see the white dwarf moving in its orbit around its companion, so we know that the pulsations are coming from a region close to the white dwarf, or possibly even from the white dwarf itself.’

Scientists have identified a strange star system that produces a radio signal every eight minutes (artist’s impression)

Curtin University researchers traced the regular pulses to an unusual stellar pairing located more than 10,000 light-years from Earth

Long-period transients rank among the most unusual phenomena detected by radio telescopes across the universe.

They appear as exceptionally powerful and tightly focused bursts of radio waves and X-rays, often originating in the distant reaches of space.

When these objects were first discovered, their precisely timed flashes led some people to wonder whether they could be signals sent by an extraterrestrial civilisation.

Astronomers now think the energy bursts are produced by the rapidly rotating remnants of dead stars.

Co-author Dr Natasha Hurley-Walker, an associate professor at the Curtin Institute of Radio Astronomy, told the Daily Mail: ‘Our best idea is that the white dwarf has a strong magnetic field, and its stellar companion is constantly feeding it charged particles through its stellar wind.

‘When those particles meet the white dwarf’s magnetosphere, they get accelerated and produce the pulses we see, a bit like the way the Sun’s wind interacts with Earth’s magnetic field to make aurorae.’

As the white dwarf spins, its beam sweeps across Earth in much the same way that a lighthouse beam crosses the surrounding darkness, creating the regular flashes detected by astronomers.

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GPM J071507-114153 contains a white dwarf and a faint G-type star similar to the Sun, which cannot be seen with the naked eye (pictured)

The fastest long-period transient identified so far flashes every 421 seconds. The slowest produces a 30-second pulse once every 2.9 hours.

For the study, published in Nature Astronomy, the team used the Murchison Widefield Array radio telescope to survey the entire section of the Milky Way visible from Australia.

After detecting the tell-tale pulse from GPM J071507-114153, the researchers carried out further radio and visible-light observations. These allowed them to pinpoint the system and identify the type of stars involved.

The observations provided the first clear indication that the radio pulses were coming from a white dwarf—the dense core left behind when a star reaches the end of its life—or from the region immediately surrounding it, as it orbited a bright, Sun-like star.

The result was unexpected because radio pulsars, the best-known sources of repeating radio flashes, are generally neutron stars: the extraordinarily dense remnants of massive stars.

White dwarfs are far more common than neutron stars, but only a small number have been linked to radio pulses. Until now, no isolated white dwarf had been observed producing this kind of emission.

The system also contains another surprising feature.

‘The companion is a Sun-like star, which we didn’t think was possible, and the white dwarf is spinning once every 7.9 minutes, which is extraordinarily fast for something of its size,’ says Professor Hurley-Walker.

As the white dwarf spins and follows its orbit, a beam of radiation sweeps across Earth like a lighthouse, creating the appearance of a regular flash

‘The fact that we now see this happen with a Sun-like companion, not just a red dwarf, suggests that the only necessary ingredients are a white dwarf and a companion star in an orbit that delivers enough material to the white dwarf’s magnetic field.’

The researchers were also able to detect subtle evidence of activity on the surface of the companion star.

Professor Hurley-Walker says: ‘The pulses act like a flashlight shining through the atmosphere of the companion!

‘As the white dwarf swings round to the far side of its orbit, the radio waves have to travel through the star’s outer atmosphere, the corona, before they reach us.

‘Magnetic fields in that plasma twist the polarisation of the radio waves, and we see this signature change very rapidly as the orbit progresses.’

By tracking these changes, the team found signals they believe were caused by a ‘stellar prominence’—a vast loop of plasma erupting from the surface of the companion star.

Professor Hurley-Walker adds: ‘I find it amazing that we can study the weather on a star more than 10,000 light years away, something that’s otherwise impossible!’