Australian travel-bloggers freed in Iranian prisoner swap
An Australian travel-blogging couple detained in Iran on spying charges have been released and returned home, Canberra said on Saturday, as an Iranian student was freed in Australia and flown back to Tehran.
Perth-based Jolie King and Mark Firkin had been documenting their journey from Australia to Britain on social media for the past two years, but went silent after posting updates from Kyrgyzstan and Pakistan about three months ago.
The pair, who have tens of thousands of followers on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, were alleged to have used a drone to take pictures of “military sites and forbidden areas,” an Iranian judiciary spokesman said last month. Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne said they were released after “very sensitive negotiations” and had been reunited with their family in Australia.
“We are extremely happy and relieved to be safely back in Australia with those we love,” the couple said in a statement issued by the Foreign Ministry in Canberra. “While the past few months have been very difficult, we know it has also been tough for those back home who have been worried for us.” Hours later, state media in Tehran reported that an Iranian student held in Australia for 13 months on accusations of circumventing US sanctions on military equipment had also been released and returned home.
Reza Dehbashi, a Ph.D. student at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, had been detained on allegations of “attempting to purchase and transfer advanced American military radar equipment via Dubai to Iran,” Iranian state television said on its website.
It said Dehbashi had been working on a “skin cancer detection device” at the time of his arrest and had dismissed the charges as “a and “unfair.”
The channel showed footage of what it said was Dehbashi arriving at Tehran’s Imam Khomeini International Airport and hugging a tearful woman apparently from his family. The Australian couple sought privacy, however.
They said in their statement that intense media coverage “may not be helpful” in the negotiations for the release of a third Australian detained in Iran in an unrelated case. Melbourne University Academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert, who specializes in Middle East politics with a focus on Gulf states, had been detained for “some months” before King and Firkin were arrested.
Her case also came to light last month. Moore-Gilbert is accused by Iranian authorities of “spying for another country.”