DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — An 85-year-old Iranian American woman detained through Iran on globally criticized espionage charges left the country Wednesday for Oman, officials said, after working harder to free him amid his health problems. However, her 51-year-old son remains in Iran, most recently on criminal leave. Baquer Namazi is the first American to be released via Iran since President Joe Biden took office, even as talks on Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers have stalled. Iran has long used detained Westerners or those with foreign ties as bargaining chips in negotiations. The state-run IRNA news company released a video of Namazi boarding a Royal Oman Air Force plane in Tehran. He said Namazi left the country on Wednesday.
The flight tracking knowledge analyzed through The Associated Press matched the description of Iran, which looked like an Oman-piloted Gulfstream IV departing Tehran’s Mehrabad International Airport just before noon. Jared Genser, a Washington-based attorney representing the Namazi family, shared a photo of Namazi on the plane. in a suit and tie, praising his release “after 6. 5 years as an illegal detainee. “”After a brief stopover, he will leave Oman and head to Abu Dhabi,” Genser said. The local Cleveland branch of the clinic to remove a serious blockage from his left internal carotid artery, Genser said. This blockade put Namazi at the top threat of stroke. Tehran said last Tuesday that Oman had thanked the Iranian government for “handing over” Namazi to Muscat. Oman and the United States did not recognize the flight.
Namazi is a former UNICEF official who served as governor of Iran’s oil-rich province of Khuzestan under the U. S. -backed shah. He was arrested in 2016, allegedly lured to Iran out of concern for his jailed son, who was detained in 2015. Namazi was placed under space arrest on medical grounds in 2018 but prevented from leaving Iran despite calls from his circle of relatives for emergency heart care. surgery after undergoing multiple hospitalizations. Last October, he underwent surgery in Iran to clear a blockage in an artery in the brain that his circle of family and supporters described as life-threatening. Security forces arrested his son, Siamak Namazi, a supporter of rapprochement between Iran and the West, as he was on his way to Iran on a business trip.
The two Namazis were sentenced to 10 years in Iran so the U. S. was sentenced to 10 years. The U. S. and U. N. say these are trumped-up charges of espionage.
The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention downplayed the charges against the two men and said their case in 2017 was part of “an emerging trend involving the arbitrary deprivation of liberty of dual nationals. “”There is no evidence that Mr. S. Namazi or Mr. Namazi. B. Namazi have a history of criminals, and add in relation to crimes against national security,” their report said. “There is no indication that they have ever acted against the national interests of the Islamic Republic of Iran. “
Reacting to the departure of Iran’s former Namazi, Babak Namazi, Baquer’s son and Siamak’s brother, said he “believes that day will never come. “
“It’s to articulate and describe enough how I feel,” he said in the statement. “I am very grateful that after so long, I will soon be able to kiss my father again. “
Babak Namazi expressed his family’s gratitude to the nations involved in facilitating his father’s operation, as well as to U. N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who said he “worked for years to get my father out of Iran for humanitarian reasons. “
“While it is incredibly vital to get my father out of Iran, today he is also bittersweet,” Babak Namazi said. “My brother Siamak and Americans Emad Sharghi and Morad Tahbaz are still detained in Iran and our nightmare does not end until our entire family, other Americans are reunited with their families. I urge the Iranian and American governments to take advantage of Iran’s humanitarian gesture to succeed in a deal that, despite everything, will bring home all American detainees in Iran, and added my brother. “