It was Sunday October 2, during the very popular London marathon: Anoosheeh Ashoori, 68, took the start in the colors of the NGO Amnesty International, and he covered his 42 kilometers in 5 hours 28 minutes and 28 seconds. He stalled a little around the thirty-second kilometer, his knees locked, but at no time did he think of giving up, “because I had to be able to dedicate my race to the women who demonstrate in Iran, to political prisoners, to those who fight for freedom,” he said on the finish line. A race that allowed him to collect 17,000 pounds sterling (almost 20,000 euros) for Amnesty International and Hostage International.
Former Iran detainee Anoosheh Ashoori ran the #LondonMarathon in his prisoner’s uniform. He told me he would run for hours each day in his confined cell hoping one day he would run the marathon. He dedicated it to the women of Iran, political prisoners and the freedom of Iran pic.twitter.com/LhX7PAgKZ7
—Kirsty Hickey (@KirstyHickey) October 2, 2022
Anoosheh Ashoori is tough: he comes back from hell, in this case Evin prison, the detention center for political prisoners in Iran. He was born and raised in Tehran, but he was not there when the mullahs took power in 1979. From 1972 to 1982 he was in England to study aeronautics. He returned to the country in 1983, before moving permanently to England in early 2000. He obtained dual Iranian-British nationality and travels regularly to Iran to see his mother. But in 2017, he was arrested for “spying” and “accumulation of illegitimate wealth”, a statement he obviously disputes. Nothing helped, the court sentenced him to 12 years in prison. Then begins a long fight led by his children and his wife from London to get him released.
What I found to not go mad in prison was running, that was my cure, that and telling myself that one day I will run the London Marathon
Anoosheh Ashoori, former political prisoner in IranBBC
Anoosheh Ashoori is locked in his cell, isolated. He knows nothing. He just feels that he is falling into oblivion: at the beginning, public opinion and the British authorities were worried, mobilized and then got tired, moved on to something else. Short of hope, he makes three suicide attempts, “and finallyhe told the BBC, what I found to not sink into madness is to run“At first, he runs in the sports hall, then the guards decide to close it. So, he falls back on the promenade court, he runs in circles in a few square meters, destroys his knees, but it doesn’t matter, “that was my cure, that and telling myself that one day I’ll run the London Marathon.”
Last March he was finally released after five years in detention, but he says what he has been through pales in comparison to what is happening right now in Iran, where nearly 100 people have died in the demonstrations for fifteen days. So to all those who ask what to do, he answers: “Give your voice, support the demonstrators, talk about them, spread their word.”