Fears travel bloggers detained in Iran could be used as ‘bargaining chips’

news.com.au

Perth couple Jolie King and Mark Firkin were arrested in July while travelling through the Iranian capital on their personal mission to “break the stigma around travelling to countries that get a bad wrap”.

They were reportedly detained for flying a drone they use to film their travels without a licence.

Iran has yet to comment on the arrests, but authorities told Ms King she was being held in the hope of a prisoner swap, according to The Times.

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The woman Iran reportedly wants in exchange is 40-year-old Negar Ghodskani, who was arrested in Australia in 2017 for attempting to dodge US sanctions and “illegally export controlled technology” to Iran.

Ghodskani was imprisoned in Adelaide for six months, where she gave birth to a boy in custody, and then extradited to the United States, where she pleaded guilty to the charges.

Earlier this year, Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif pushed for Ghodskani’s release during a speech at the Asia Society in New York, saying nobody talked about her in Australia.

“We have an Iranian lady in Australia who gave birth in prison after she was arrested on an extradition request from the United States,” he said.

“But nobody talks about this lady in Australia who gave birth to a child in prison, whose child is growing up outside prison with the mother in prison.”

Mr Zarif suggested at the time that Ghodskani could be swapped for Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian project manager who has been detained in Iran on spying charges since 2016.

“I put this offer on the table publicly now — exchange them,” he said. But the exchange never happened.

WHAT HAS AUSTRALIA SAID?

Foreign Minister Marise Payne said on Thursday that the Government was pressing Iran to free Ms King and Mr Firkin, as well as another British-Australian woman whose name has not been released.

She told the Senate that she had raised the arrests “many times” with Mr Zarif, while the Australian Embassy in Tehran had made “repeated representations to very senior Iranian officials” on the prisoners’ behalf.

Analysts and family members of dual nationals and others detained in Iran have long said hard-liners in the Islamic Republic’s security agencies use the prisoners as bargaining chips in negotiations with the West.

A UN panel in 2018 described “an emerging pattern involving the arbitrary deprivation of liberty of dual nationals” in Iran, which Tehran denied.

But Ms Payne said she did not believe the arrests related “to broader issues”.

“We have no reason to think that these arrests are connected to international concern over Iran’s nuclear program, United Nations sanctions or sanctions enforcement or maritime security and the safety of civilian shipping,” she said.

Britain and Australia last month signed onto a US-led maritime security mission to protect international shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, where Iran’s recent seizures of vessels has raised tensions with the West.