An Iranian journalist facing the death penalty in her home country has been granted asylum in Israel, where she is expected to arrive shortly.
Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotoveli said on Monday that Neda Amin would be arriving in Israel “in the coming days,” though her initial plans to come to Israel had been delayed due to “personal reasons,” The Jerusalem Post reported.
Amin, who has written columns for The Times of Israel in Persian, apparently missed the scheduled flight from Turkey that was supposed to bring her to Israel, leading to speculation that Turkish authorities had arrested her. David Horovitz, editor-in-chief of The Times of Israel, later tweeted that Amin had not been detained.
Interior Minister Aryeh Deri confirmed on Sunday that Israel had offered Amin asylum. “This is a journalist whose life is in real danger simply for writing columns in an Israeli news site. In these clear humanitarian circumstances, I have authorized her entry without hesitation,” Deri said in a statement.
Amin fled to Turkey three years ago, but faced immediate deportation after Turkish authorities announced that they would send her back to Iran, despite threats to her life.
The Israeli Journalists Association submitted a request for asylum in Amin’s name, which has been granted by the Interior Ministry and allows the journalist to enter Israel on a tourist visa.
In the letter to the minister, members of the organization explained that Amin is being persecuted for her journalistic work, making her a refugee on the run with no safe place left to go. “Nada fled from Iran to Turkey three years ago and she is currently being investigated by Turkish authorities for baseless accusations of spying for Israel,” the Journalists Association wrote in its request.
“Amin is expected to be arrested immediately upon arrival in Iran and is in danger of execution because of her journalistic work,” her brother wrote in a separate letter sent to Minister Deri.
Artists and intellectuals routinely face persecution in Iran and this is not the first time that Israel has granted entry to an Iranian activist in danger. Payam Feili, an openly gay poet whose native Iran considers homosexuality to be a crime punishable by death, was granted a tourist visa to visit Israel in December 2015 and applied for asylum in the Jewish state in February 2016.
[Photo: Twitter ]