Baquer Namazi, an elderly American wrongfully detained in Iran was reunited with his family in Abu Dhabi, reported Wednesday the Department of State it’s a statement.
“Baquer Namazi is now in Abu Dhabi after leaving Iran for Muscat; he has been reunited with his family and will soon receive the medical treatment he urgently needs,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said.
Namazi, 85, has been detained in Iran for more than six years and traveled to the Cleveland Clinic in Abu Dhabi to clear a severe blockage in his left internal carotid artery (ICA), which puts him at very high risk of stroke. stroke reported his family.
“It is impossible to sufficiently articulate and describe how I feel. I am so grateful that after such a long time, I will soon be able to hug my father again,” Babak Namazi, Baquer Namazi’s son, said in a statement ahead of the family reunion. “For the past few years, I thought this day would never happen. It’s impossible to thank everyone who helped make this happen.”
USA assured that Namazi was detained “cruelly” in 2016 while working to secure the release of his son, Siamak Namazi, who has also been “unfairly” detained in Iran for seven years.
The Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, thanked Oman for their collaboration in releasing the prisoner -which mediated with the Iranian authorities to charter the flight that took him out of the country- and to the United Arab Emirates, the country that welcomes him before his return to the United States. .USA
Namazi was sentenced in Iran to a ten-year sentence in October 2016 for espionage, a charge the United States says is “false.”
The Namazis’ arrest came at a time when the Tehran regime was detaining several Iranians with dual American, British and Canadian citizenship, among others, on charges of espionage.
In 2017, the Iranian Justice confirmed on appeal the ten-year prison sentences handed down against Banquer and Siamek Namazi, as well as against another person with American nationality, Xiyue Wang, who, according to Tehran, sought in 2016 to infiltrate institutions to obtain classified information.