Mohammad Mosaed has Applied for Asylum and May Escape Deportation

The prominent Iranian journalist Mohammad Mosaed, who was detained on January 18 after illegally crossing Iran’s border into Turkey, has applied for asylum to the Turkish government. Mosaed is currently in quarantine at the Van City Detention Center and his lawyer is due to follow-up on the journalist's legal status tomorrow morning.

Mosaed had been traveling on foot when, at about 11:30 pm on the evening of January 17, and suffering from the cold, he contacted Turkish police to advise them of his situation and location. Border guards arrived and, after verbally and physically assaulting him, took him to  Ozalp Devlet Hastanes hospital by ambulance for treatment.

The hospital confirmed earlier this morning that Mosaed had been hospitalized but had since been transferred to an unknown location.

Human rights organizations and several lawyers have since been briefed on Mosaed’s current condition. Concerns of Mosaaed’s possible deportation back to Iran intensified when he told the Committee to Protect Journalists that the Turkish authorities wanted to hand him to Iranian border guards.

Continued queries by human rights lawyers, including Canan Pehlivan, who took up the case, revealed that Mosaed had been transferred to the Ozalp City Detention Center. He was later taken to a detention center in the city of Van and has now reported that, after submitting his asylum application, was told by police told him that he will be quarantined for several days.

Human rights lawyers, including Pahlavan, are scheduled to meet with Mosaed on the morning of January 19 morning to pursue Mosaed’s release from custody and his request for asylum.

Turkish officials have reportedly stated, in response to a number of media outlets and journalists, that Mosaed will not be returned to Iran and will remain in Turkey until the outcome of his asylum application is determined.

Mohammad Mosaed left Iran before he could be summoned to serve a prison sentence for four years and nine months. He was arrested in November 2019 for posting to Twitter about the Iranian government’s Internet shutdown during the violent suppression of nationwide protests of that month. He was summoned by the Revolutionary Guards intelligence service in February 2020 once again, after criticizing the government’s coronavirus response, and was later sentenced to prison by a Revolutionary Court.

Internet outage during the November 2019 protests, and was summoned to the IRGC's intelligence service once in February following criticism of the Iranian government's dealing of coronavirus pandemic. He was eventually sentenced by the Islamic Revolutionary court of Iran to four year and nine months in prison.