Former Iran detainee Anoosheh Ashoori in London Marathon bid

Anoosheh Ashoori, who was released with fellow British Iranian detainee Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe in March, said he had thought about running the marathon while in the notorious Evin prison. (Screenshot)
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Updated 26 August 2022
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Former Iran detainee Anoosheh Ashoori in London Marathon bid

  • Anoosheh Ashoori, 68, plans to run in support of Amnesty International, other Iranian detainees
  • British Iranian businessman began running while in prison, promising himself to take part in marathon whenever released

LONDON: British Iranian businessman Anoosheh Ashoori, held captive by Iran for nearly five years, plans to run the London Marathon on Oct. 2.

The 68-year-old Londoner, who was released with fellow British Iranian detainee Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe in March, said he had thought about running the marathon while in the notorious Evin prison, north of Tehran.

He took to running around the jail’s exercise yard, building up stamina to eventually be able to run for two hours.

While incarcerated, he also read a book on running and now intends to take part in the London event in support of human rights advocacy and campaign group Amnesty International.

“When I read that, I decided it was so inspiring that anytime I was released, I promised myself, whatever age I am, I am going to participate in the London Marathon. By running you can fight going insane, it is magic,” he said.

Ashoori was arrested in August 2017 and convicted of spying for Mossad, Israel’s intelligence service, charges he has always denied. He had been living in the UK for 20 years and was in Iran to visit his elderly mother.

He plans to run the marathon alongside his son, Aryan, and pointed out that they were also doing it to, “let all the ones who are left behind know they are not forgotten.”

He also urged the UK government to do more to secure the release of other dual nationals being held in Iran, including conservationist Morad Tahbaz.

Amnesty International UK described Ashoori’s story as an “amazing turnaround.”

Jo Atkins-Potts, of the group’s UK operation, said: “Since his release in March, Anoosheh has always been clear that he wouldn’t rest until Morad Tahbaz, Mehran Raoof, and others unjustly detained in Iran were released.

“He’s an inspiration and we’re delighted and honored to be campaigning with him.”


China defends diplomats after Taiwan VP car ramming claims

Updated 2 sec ago
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China defends diplomats after Taiwan VP car ramming claims

BEIJING: China defended its diplomats on Monday after Taiwan accused Beijing’s embassy staff of planning to ram its vice president’s car during an official visit to Europe.
“Chinese diplomats overseas always respect their host country’s laws and regulations,” Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said.
Taiwan’s top China policy body, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC), said on Friday that Hsiao Bi-khim’s motorcade was surveilled and followed in a ploy to be rammed during a visit to the Czech Republic in March 2024.
Czech military intelligence spokesman Jan Pejsek told AFP on Sunday that Hsiao was targeted by “persons legalized in diplomatic positions at the Chinese Embassy in Prague.”
He said they tailed her and sought information about Hsiao’s program and meetings with Czech officials.
China claims Taiwan as its territory and has ramped up the deployment of fighter jets and warships around the self-ruled island in recent years.
In response to the Czech claims, Beijing insisted on Monday that “Taiwan is a part of China and has no so-called vice president.”
“No matter how the DPP authorities try to change things up and seek independence from the outside, and drive a wedge in China’s diplomatic relationships, they will not be able to cover up their sinister plot and their attempt will not succeed,” Mao said, referring to Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party.

’We have nothing’: Afghans driven out of Iran return to uncertain future

Updated 6 min 58 sec ago
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’We have nothing’: Afghans driven out of Iran return to uncertain future

  • Since January, more than 690,000 Afghans have left Iran
  • Tehran ordered Afghans without the right to remain to leave by July 6
ISLAM QALA: Hajjar Shademani’s family waited for hours in the heat and dust after crossing the border into Afghanistan, their neat pile of suitcases all that remained of a lifetime in Iran after being deported to their homeland.
The 19-year-old and her three siblings are among tens of thousands of Afghans who have crossed the Islam Qala border point in recent days, the majority forced to leave, according to the United Nations and Taliban authorities.
Despite being born in Iran after her parents fled war 40 years ago, Shademani said the country “never accepted us.” When police came to her family’s home in Shiraz city and ordered them to leave, they had no choice.
But Afghanistan is also alien to her.
“We don’t have anything here,” she told AFP in English.
Between Iranian universities that would not accept her and the Taliban government, which has banned education for women, Shademani’s studies are indefinitely on hold.
“I really love studying... I wanted to continue but in Afghanistan, I think I cannot.”
At Herat province’s Islam Qala crossing, the checkpoint is usually busy handling the cycle of smuggling to deportation as young men seek work in Iran.
But since Tehran ordered Afghans without the right to remain to leave by July 6, the number of returnees — especially families — has surged. More than 230,000 departed in June alone, the United Nations International Organization for Migration (IOM) said.
Since January, more than 690,000 Afghans have left Iran, “70 percent of whom were forcibly sent back,” IOM spokesperson Avand Azeez Agha told AFP.
Of the more than a dozen returnees AFP spoke to on Saturday, none said they had fled the recent Iran-Israel conflict, though it may have ramped up pressure. Arrests, however, had helped spur their departures.


Yadullah Alizada had only the clothes on his back and a cracked phone to call his family when he stepped off one of the many buses unloading people at the IOM-run reception center.
The 37-year-old said he was arrested while working as a day laborer and held at a detention camp before being deported to Afghanistan.
Forced to leave without his family or belongings, he slept on a bit of cardboard at the border, determined to stay until his family could join him.
“My three kids are back there, they’re all sick right now, and they don’t know how to get here.”
He hopes to find work in his home province of Daikundi, but in a country wracked by entrenched poverty and unemployment, he faces an uphill climb.
The UN mission for Afghanistan, UNAMA, has warned that the influx of deportees — many arriving with “no assets, limited access to services, and no job prospects” — risks further destabilising the crisis-wracked country.
Long lines snaked into tents encircling the reception center where returnees accessed UN, NGO and government services.
Gusty wind whipped women’s Iranian-style hijabs and young men’s trendy outfits, clothing that stood out against the shalwar kameez that has become ubiquitous in Afghanistan since the Taliban swept to power in 2021, imposing their strict interpretation of Islamic law.
Deputy Prime Minister Abdul Salam Hanafi inspected the site on Saturday, striding through the crowd surrounded by a heavily armed entourage and pledging to ensure “that no Afghan citizen is denied their rights in Iran” and that seized or abandoned assets would be returned.
Taliban authorities have consistently called for “dignified” treatment of the migrants and refugees hosted in Iran and Pakistan, the latter having also ousted hundreds of thousands of Afghans since the latest decades-long war ended.


Over one million Afghans have already returned to Afghanistan this year from both neighboring countries. The numbers are only expected to rise, even as foreign aid is slashed and the Taliban government struggles for cash and international recognition.
The IOM says it can only serve a fraction of the returnees, with four million Afghans potentially impacted by Iran’s deadline.
Some of the most vulnerable pass through the agency’s transit center in Herat city, where they can get a hot meal, a night’s rest and assistance on their way.
But at the clean and shaded compound, Bahara Rashidi was still worried about what would become of her and her eight sisters back in Afghanistan. They had smuggled themselves into Iran to make a living after their father died.
“There is no man in our family who can work here, and we don’t have a home or money,” the 19-year-old told AFP.
“We have nothing.”

Russian forces advance and take first village in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region, state media say

Updated 13 min 3 sec ago
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Russian forces advance and take first village in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region, state media say

MOSCOW: Russian forces have taken control of the first village in the east-central Ukrainian region of Dnipropetrovsk, Russian state media and war bloggers said on Monday, after Russia took 950 square km of territory in two months.
There was no immediate confirmation from Ukrainian sources or from the Russian Defense Ministry.
As Moscow and Kyiv talk of possible peace, the war has intensified with Russian forces carving out a 200 square kilometer (77.22 square miles) chunk of Ukraine’s Sumy region and entering the Dnipropetrovsk region last month.
The authoritative Ukrainian Deep State map shows that Russia now controls 113,588 square km of Ukrainian territory, up 943 square km over the two months to June 28.
Russia’s state RIA news agency quoted a pro-Russian official, Vladimir Rogov, as saying that Russian forces had taken control of the village of Dachnoye just inside the Dnipropetrovsk region.
Russia has said it is willing to make peace but that Ukraine must withdraw from the entirety of four regions which Russia mostly controls and which President Vladimir Putin says are now legally part of Russia.
Ukraine and its European backers say those terms are tantamount to capitulation and that Russia is not interested in peace and that they will never accept Russian control of a fifth of Ukraine.
The areas under Russian control include Crimea, more than 99 percent of the Luhansk region, over 70 percent of the Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, all in the east or southeast, and fragments of the Kharkiv, Sumy and Dnipropetrovsk regions.


Dalai Lama suggests institution to continue at 90th birthday launch

Updated 40 min 5 sec ago
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Dalai Lama suggests institution to continue at 90th birthday launch

  • The Dalai Lama has said the institution will continue only if there is popular demand

MCLEOD GANJ: Exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, gave on Monday the strongest indication yet that the 600-year-old institution would continue after his death, at prayer celebrations for his 90th birthday.
The Dalai Lama joined thousands of Buddhist followers on Monday in the prayer celebrations, a landmark event resonating far beyond the Indian Himalayan town where he has lived for decades.
“As far as the institution of the Dalai Lama, there will be some kind of a framework within which we can talk about its continuation,” he said, speaking in Tibetan.
The leader, who turns 90 on July 6, is according to Tibetans the 14th reincarnation of the Dalai Lama.
He and thousands of other Tibetans have lived in exile in India since Chinese troops crushed an uprising in the Tibetan capital Lhasa in 1959.
Draped in traditional maroon and yellow robes, the Dalai Lama sat and listened to speeches and chants of monks, nuns, pilgrims, as well as well-wishers from across the world on Monday.
“Though I am 90 years old, physically I am very healthy,” he said, before tasting a slice of Tibetan-style birthday cake, an elaborately decorated tower made from roasted barley and butter cut in front of him.
“In the time I have left, I will continue to dedicate myself to the well-being of others as much as possible,” he said.


The Dalai Lama’s 90th birthday is more than a personal milestone.
The charismatic Nobel Peace Prize-winning Buddhist Tenzin Gyatso is also expected to reveal if there will be another Dalai Lama after him.
The Dalai Lama has said the institution will continue only if there is popular demand — and is widely expected to reveal that decision on Wednesday.
The occasion carries profound weight not only for Tibetans, but also for global supporters who see the Dalai Lama as a symbol of non-violence, compassion, and the enduring struggle for Tibetan cultural identity under Chinese rule.
“We offer our fervent devotions that Tenzin Gyatso, protector of the Land of Snows, lives for one hundred eons,” a chorus of red-robed monks sang.
“May all your noble aspirations be fulfilled,” they added, in front of a crowd that included religious leaders of many faiths.
His advancing age has also sparked concern over the future of Tibetan leadership and the delicate question of his succession.
While China condemns him as a rebel and separatist, the internationally recognized Dalai Lama describes himself as a “simple Buddhist monk.”
Many exiled Tibetans fear China will name a successor to bolster control over a territory it poured troops into in 1950.
The Dalai Lama has been lauded by his followers for his tireless campaign for greater autonomy for Tibet, a vast high-altitude plateau in China about the size of South Africa.
The Dalai Lama handed over political authority in 2011 to an exiled government chosen democratically by 130,000 Tibetans globally.
At the same time, he warned that the future of his spiritual post faced an “obvious risk of vested political interests misusing the reincarnation system.”


Snakes on a plane bound for India, again

Updated 4 min 11 sec ago
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Snakes on a plane bound for India, again

  • The live snakes included reptiles often sold in the pet trade, and were largely non venomous

NEW DELHI: Indian customs officers in Mumbai said they have stopped a plane passenger arriving from Thailand with a wriggling cargo of live snakes, the third such seizure this month.

“Customs officers... foiled yet another wildlife smuggling attempt, 16 live snakes... seized from passenger returning from Thailand,” said customs officers in the airport in the Indian financial hub.

The passenger, who arrived on Sunday, has been arrested, the customs agency said in a statement, with “further investigation underway.”

The live snakes included reptiles often sold in the pet trade, and were largely non-venomous, or with venom too weak to affect people.

They included garter snakes, a rhino rat snake and a Kenyan sand boa, among others.

In early June, customs officers stopped a passenger smuggling dozens of venomous vipers, also arriving from Thailand.

Days later, officers stopped another traveler carrying 100 creatures including lizards, sunbirds and tree-climbing possums.

Wildlife trade monitor TRAFFIC, which battles the smuggling of wild animals and plants, has warned of a “very troubling” trend in trafficking driven by the exotic pet trade.

More than 7,000 animals, dead and alive, have been seized along the Thailand-India air route in the last 3.5 years, it said.