Iran's nuclear energy chief accused British spies on Monday of shadowing him around the world - even to the "back door" of his university office - to gather information ahead of a failed assassination attempt on him last year, Reuters reported.
"Six years ago the intelligence service of the UK began collecting information and data regarding my past, my family, the number of children," Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani told a news conference.
"The agents of MI6 of England in different and various places including the airport in France, in scientific places in Poland, Italy, Netherlands, Malaysia ... repeatedly following and looking for information regarding myself."
They had even "checked until the back door of my room in the university to see whether I have a bodyguard or not," Abbasi-Davani added through an interpreter.
Abbasi-Davani, subject to U.N. sanctions because of what Western officials said was his involvement in suspected atomic arms research, also blamed Israel and the United States for attacks on him and other Iranian scientists.
Western countries have previously dismissed allegations of this nature from the Islamic Republic, which they suspect of seeking to develop a nuclear weapons capability.
The Foreign Office in London declined to comment on the allegations.
In July, university lecturer Darioush Rezaie was shot dead by gunmen in eastern Tehran, the third murder of a scientist since 2009. One was killed in a car bomb, the second by a device detonated remotely.
Iran has said the attacks were the work of enemies that wished to deny it the right to develop nuclear technology which it says is aimed at generating electricity.
Himself slightly wounded in a 2010 car bomb blast, Abbasi-Davani said the attacks were carried out by Israel with the "support of the intelligence services of the United States and England." A nuclear scientist, he was named to his current post a few months later.
Washington has denied any involvement in the murders and arch foe Israel has declined to comment.