November 22 2024
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New Zealand couple trapped in Iran leave ‘safe and well’
Agence France-Presse
last updated:
Oct 27,2022
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WELLINGTON — Two travel bloggers from New Zealand who
disappeared from public view for almost four months after entering Iran have
now safely left the country, officials in Wellington said on Wednesday.اضافة اعلان
Bridget Thackwray and her newlywed husband Topher
Richwhite, the son of one of New Zealand’s richest men, entered Iran from
Turkey in early July.
Their social media feeds — usually filled with
glamorous shots of exotic locations — fell silent soon after, prompting concern
from fans, friends, and family.
New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on
Wednesday revealed that the government had been “working hard” for several
months to “ensure the safe” exit of the couple, who had endured “difficult
circumstances”.
“I am aware of just how incredibly difficult it has
been for them and their family over these past few months,” she said. “I am
delighted they are safe.”
The circumstances of their time in Iran are not yet
clear — Iranian officials told AFP that the couple had not been detained or
arrested.
Westerners are frequently taken into custody by Iran’s hard-line government, which has been at loggerheads with the United
States and its allies since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Detainees have been released after intensive
behind-the-scenes negotiations, which have been known to involve prisoner
swaps, leading to accusations that Tehran is engaged in “hostage diplomacy”.
‘Something was wrong’In a July video post that
was later removed from social media sites, Richwhite said the couple had been
stopped at the border, their 4x4 vehicle had been inspected, and they had been
instructed how to dress and behave in a tense meeting with guards.
Canada-based fan Chris Los, a retired teacher, said
the couple’s GPS tracker then stopped in the same place for several days.
“They never stay in the same place in the middle of
nowhere for this long,” Los told AFP. “Because they share photos and video so
openly and often, it was obvious to me that something was wrong.”
Concerned posts on their Facebook and Instagram
feeds went unanswered.
Little public comment was made until Kylie
Moore-Gilbert, an Australian who spent more than 800 days in Iranian jails
before being released, reported that the couple were missing.
“Iran has arrested more than a dozen foreigners in
the past 6 months alone. ‘Quiet diplomacy’ never works to the detainee’s
advantage in such cases,” she said.
A New Zealand official told AFP the couple, having
left Iran, were now “safe and well”.
Their disappearance echoes the fate of
British-Australian travel bloggers who were held in Iran in 2019 on suspicion
of spying and circumventing sanctions, but who were later released.
At the same time Australia halted the extradition of
Reza Dehbashi to the United States.
A PhD student at the University of Queensland,
Dehbashi had been detained on allegations of “attempting to purchase and
transfer advanced American military radar equipment via Dubai to Iran”.
Ardern did not provide details of the negotiations
with Iran’s government and said she had not shied away from criticising the
recent bloody crackdown on young protestors — many of them women objecting to
strict Islamic law and authoritarian governance.
“Of course, we have shared our condemnation at the
same time we have also had a duty of care to ensure that those New Zealanders
were able to exit Iran,” Ardern said. “We have worked hard to do both: to
ensure their safety but also to place our values on record on what is happening
in Iran.”
Iran has repeatedly accused outside forces of stirring up
the protests, and in late September the country announced that nine foreign
nationals — including some from France, Germany, Italy, Poland and the
Netherlands — had been arrested.