UK-Iranian Academic Says he Escaped Iran While on Bail

UK-Iranian Academic Says he Escaped Iran While on Bail
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UK-Iranian Academic Says he Escaped Iran While on Bail

UK-Iranian Academic Says he Escaped Iran While on Bail

A British-Iranian academic said Wednesday that he had fled Iran across a mountain border after being sentenced to nine years in jail for collaborating with a hostile government.

Kameel Ahmady, a social anthropologist studying female genital mutilation and child marriage in Iran, told the BBC and The Guardian newspaper that he escaped while on bail after being sentenced, as he feared he would not see his young son again.

"I just simply left. I packed my bag with shaving kit, a few books of mine and a laptop and I think pyjamas... and warm clothes," he told BBC radio.

After being detained for suspected links with foreign intelligence services, he spent three months in Tehran's notorious Evin prison, where he said he was subjected to "so-called white torture, a psychological pressure they put on you."

He was then released on bail and later sentenced in December last year and fined 600,000 euros (£529,000, $722,000) for receiving "illegitimate funds" and working on projects with "subversive institutions", Iran's Tasnim news agency reported.

British media reported that he escaped while on bail pending his appeal.

He described the journey to the BBC as "very cold, very long, very dark and very scary".

Ahmady is now living in London with his wife and son, British media reported, and his appeal was thrown out in his absence on Monday.

He told The Guardian he did not know whether Iranian authorities were aware of his escape.

He said he took the paths used by smugglers of goods from Iraq and Turkey, wading through deep snow and evading Iranian border patrols.

Ahmady told the BBC that as a dual-national and "a researcher who was digging up sensitive issues," he was aware he faced being detained.

"I always knew that I am an attractive and potential asset," AFP quoted him as saying. "But that doesn't mean that I have done anything wrong."



Russian President Dismisses Transport Minister

Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks at the BRICS summit in Rio via videoconference at the Kremlin in Moscow, Sunday, July 6, 2025. (Mikhail Metzel, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)
Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks at the BRICS summit in Rio via videoconference at the Kremlin in Moscow, Sunday, July 6, 2025. (Mikhail Metzel, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)
TT
20

Russian President Dismisses Transport Minister

Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks at the BRICS summit in Rio via videoconference at the Kremlin in Moscow, Sunday, July 6, 2025. (Mikhail Metzel, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)
Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks at the BRICS summit in Rio via videoconference at the Kremlin in Moscow, Sunday, July 6, 2025. (Mikhail Metzel, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)

Russian President Vladimir Putin fired his transport minister on Monday, according to a presidential decree, removing Roman Starovoit from his post after just over a year in the job.

According to Reuters, no reason was given for Starovoit's unexpected dismissal. He was appointed transport minister in May 2024 after spending almost five years as governor of Russia's western Kursk region.

A few months after vacating that role, Ukrainian troops spilled over the border into Kursk as Kyiv launched its biggest incursion into Russian territory since the start of the war in 2022.

Starovoit's predecessor as transport minister, Vitaly Savelyev, became a deputy prime minister. According to the Vedomosti daily newspaper, Starovoit's replacement could be his deputy minister Andrei Nikitin, who was formerly governor of the Novgorod Region.

Prior to serving as a regional governor, Starovoit had worked in the transport sector, leading Russia's federal roads agency Rosavtodor for six years.