Academic Facing Jail in Iran Escapes to U.K.
Mr Ahmadi said that after his 2019 arrest he was held in solitary confinement for three months, north of Tehran, and blindfolded during repeated interrogations. The imprisonment was very excruciating, he said, that he yearned for questioning, as he had obtained the only form of human contact.
“You just become mentally incapacitated, insensitive to your environment,” Mr. Ahmadi told the British broadcaster Channel 4.
Mr. Ahmadi, who is of Kurdish ethnicity, was born in northwestern Iran and received British citizenship in the 1990s. He has published several reports and books on genital cutting and child marriage in Iran. In a report published in 2015, He wrote that genital cutting was “inherent in the social fabric of Iranian culture” in at least four provinces.
“I am aware that my prison term is a tool to protect Iranian security services and the Ministry of Justice and to intimidate and pressure some people working on social issues,” Ahmedi said in a statement published on his website on Wednesday. .
According to local reports in December, prosecutors in Tehran accused him of working closely with the United States and others, a charge he has denied.
More than half-a-dozen foreigners and dual nationals are lodged in Iranian jails, including Ms. Zagdi-Ratcliffe; Fariba Addlakha, A French-Iranian academic; Siamak Namazi, a businessman, and his father, Bayer Namazi, a former UNICEF official, both Iranian-Americans; Dr. Ahmed Reza Jalali, a Swedish-Iranian physician and researcher; Nahid Taghavi, a German-Iranian architect; And Murad Tahabaz, an Iranian-American environmentalist.
Kylie Moore-Gilbert, A British-Australian scholar who was detained in 2018 on charges of spying for Israel, was released in December in exchange for a prisoner swap with three Iranian men.
Fernaz Fasih contributed reporting.
