UPDATE, FEB 13:

Sexual abuse allegations have resurfaced against Anglo-Iranian social anthropologist and academic Kameel Ahmady after his escape from Iran.

Four women have each claimed to the Guardian that Ahmady committed sexual assault, and others are alleging repeated sexual harassment.

The women said they fear that Ahmady, a researcher on female genital mutilation and child marriage, could put others at risk when he resumes research.

Friends and colleagues of the women support their accounts.

Ahmady, who fled the Islamic Republic after a 9-year, 3-month prison sentence for “collaboration with a hostile government”, denies the allegations. He said in a statement that the accusations were “baseless slander”, by professional rivals and Iran, to smear him and undermine his work.

However, in a now deleted post on social media, he apologized for “mistakes” in the workplace and for “hurting people with my relaxed attitude to relationships”.

Last year Iran’s Sociology Association suspended Ahmady’s membership and ended his role as secretary of the Children Sociological Studies Group. It found, “At the minimum, some abuse of power had occurred. [His] behavior resulted in the sexual abuse of several young researchers and violated ethical codes governing scientific and research activities.

Ahmady said the accusations were not tested in court and were part of a campaign to “silence my voice” by Iranian security forces and other academics.

ORIGINAL ENTRY, FEB 4: Anglo-Iranian social anthropologist and academic Kameel Ahmady has escaped a 9-year, 3-month prison sentence in Iran by fleeing on foot across a mountain border.

Ahmady (pictured) was on bail pending an appeal against his sentence. He used smugglers’ paths from Iraq and Turkey, evading Iranian patrols and traversing fog and snow up to 1.5 meters (4.9 feet) deep.

The academic explained, in an interview published on Wednesday:

Once I had been sentenced I had a choice of whether I would stay and not see my family and four-year-old child until he was 14, or to risk fleeing….

I just simply left. I packed my bag with a shaving kit, a few books of mine, and a laptop. And warm clothes, because I knew I had to smuggle myself out of that train in the mountains. It was very cold, very long, very dark, and very scary.

Ahmady was arrested at his home in Tehran in August 2019 and spent three months in Evin Prison, subjected to “so-called white torture, a psychological pressure they put on you”.

He was sentenced in December 2020 for “collaboration with a hostile government” and ordered to pay a fine of $722,000. Revolutionary Courts Judge Abolghasem Salavati condemned the anthropologist for meetings with Iranian MPs trying to raise the age of child marriage:

Generally, it can be said that increasing the age of marriage for children is one of the strategies of the enemy for weakening and ruining the family system; and that Mr Kameel Ahmady is one of the leaders in the implementation of this strategy in Iran.

The academic said he did not know if Iranian authorities realize he has escaped.

“You Are British, You Are Worth A Lot”

Ahmady, an ethnic Kurd, wrote about sensitive issues such as child marriage, female genital mutilation, minorities, gender, and temporary marriages in Shia Islam.

The anthropologist said he was targeted when Iran retaliated in 2019 for the UK’s seizure of an Iranian oil tanker, suspected of breaking European Union sanctions, off the coast of Gibraltar.

By the first week of the interrogation, the…ship was released, but I had no access to media. I was in solitary confinement. So the only source of information I had was the interrogators. And one day, this guy just came and he was so happy. He said, “Thank you. Thank you very much. We got our ship back. And I think you made a difference here. So thank you for this, but we still really have a long way to go with you.”

And I said, “So what’s that got to do with me?” He said, “Wow, come on. You are British, you are worth a lot. Britain is the cradle of human rights so of course you are worth a lot to them.”.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have detained a series of dual and foreign nationals in recent years, hoping to put pressure on their home governments for prisoner exchanges and political concessions.

UK-linked detainees include:

*Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, seized in April 2016 and sentenced to 5 years in prison

See also UK MPs Call for Action Over Iran’s British Political Prisoners

*Anoosheh Ashoori, a retired British-Iranian civil engineer arrested in 2017 and sentenced to 10 years

*Aras Amiri, an Iranian permanent resident in the UK and British Council employee, seized in March 2018 and serving a 10-year sentence.