American citizen Baker Namazi, one of four Americans Washington has demanded to be released as part of efforts to revive the nuclear deal signed with Tehran, arrived in the Sultanate of Oman on Wednesday after leaving Iran, the lawyer said.
“I’m sure they’ve arrived,” human rights lawyer Jared Genser told AFP, noting that he spoke to a relative of Backer who was traveling with him on the plane.
Earlier today, Iranian news agencies confirmed the news of the departure of US citizen Muhammad Baqer Namazi from Tehran to the Sultanate of Oman.
The official IRNA news agency released video footage of Namazi boarding a plane belonging to the Royal Air Force of Oman, apparently in Tehran. She added that Namazi left the country on Wednesday.
Earlier, a US State Department spokesman told AFP that Namazi was allowed to leave Iran and also released his son, who is imprisoned there.
A U.S. spokesman stated, “The unjustly detained American citizen Baker Namazi was allowed to leave Iran, and his unjustly detained son was also allowed to leave the prison.”
Previously, Iran and the US had held indirect talks, brokered by a third country, to agree on an exchange of prisoners in exchange for unfreezing Iranian financial resources in foreign currency.
Baker Namazi, 85, a former United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) employee, was arrested in February 2016 when he traveled to Iran to seek the release of his son Siamak, a businessman arrested in Tehran in October 2015.
They were sentenced in Iran to 10 years in prison for espionage. The father was released in 2020 without the right to leave Iran, while Siamak remained in prison, and it is likely that his current release is temporary.
