Payne’s direct plea to Iran on Australian bloggers

Foreign Minister Marise Payne has made a face-to-face plea to Iran over three Australians in Tehran jail.

Foreign Minister Marise Payne has made a face-to-face plea to her ­Iranian counterpart over the fate of three ­Australians detained in a Tehran jail, including a travel-blogging couple arrested for flying a drone near a military ­installation.

As part of a desperate diplomatic mission, Senator Payne flew to Bangladesh last week to meet Iran’s Foreign Minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, on the sidelines of the Indian Ocean Conference.

Jolie King and Mark Firkin, who have been travelling around the world since 2017, were ­arrested about 10 weeks ago.

The husband of another prisoner in the notorious Evin jail — British Iranian Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who is serving five years for spying — said on Thursday that Ms King was at first held in solitary confinement.

Richard Ratcliffe said the ­isolation had left Ms King scared, disoriented and intimidated ­before she was moved to be alongside other prisoners.

An unnamed female academic, who holds both Australian and British citizenship and works at a Melbourne university, is also being held in Tehran after being arrested last October. She has ­reportedly been sentenced to 10 years’ jail for espionage.

Senator Payne told parliament on Thursday the Australian government had repeatedly pressed Iran for the Australians’ release.

Mark Firkin and Jolie King with their modified Toyota LandCruiser on the Karakoram Highway in Pakistan.

“I have communicated with my Iranian counterpart, Foreign Minister Zarif, many times about these cases, including through face-to-face meetings,” she said.

“We met as recently as last week. I will maintain my practice of many years by keeping the contents of my discussions with Foreign Minister Zarif private.

“But I will say that a central topic of our meetings has been the three Australians.”

The Australians are being held amid heightened tensions as Australia joins a US-led mission to protect ships from Iranian aggression in the Strait of Hormuz. Ms King and Mr Firkin were arrested before Scott Morrison announced on August 21 that Australia would join the mission in the Gulf.

Manoto TV, a Persian-­language broadcaster in London, first published the names of the bloggers on Twitter, reporting that the two were arrested “for flying a drone near the capital”.

“The family says this was a misunderstanding and Jolie King and her fiance, Mark Firkin, were unaware of the Iranian law which bans drone flights without a ­licence,” said the editor of Manoto.

The editor added that their trial had not yet been held.

Mr Firkin, a construction manager, and Ms King, a building ­designer, moved into a modest flat in the seaside Perth suburb of Cottesloe, which Mr Firkin bought in January 2016 for $301,000.

A neighbour said yesterday he often saw the pair in the common carpark of the apartment building working on alterations to their Toyota LandCrusier before their epic journey began in mid-2017.

When the couple featured in Lonely Planet’s book The Vanlife Compilaton last December, Mr Firkin revealed he learned to love driving holidays as a kid when his parents took him on an around-Australia trip for a year.

A photograph taken from a drone, in Penang, Malaysia.

In 2016 and 2017 he worked fly-in, fly-out in the northern Pilbara region as he and Ms King converted the 2006 Toyota into a camper. They planned to take it to India, Nepal, China, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Iran and Turkey before driving across Europe to London.

The Prime Minister yesterday defended the government’s decision to try to negotiate the Australians’ release in secret, saying talking publicly about such cases was “never in the interests of those who are caught up in these issues”.

The couple’s families said on Wednesday: “Our families hope to see Mark and Jolie safely home as soon as possible.”

Senator Payne told parliament that Australian officials had been working around the clock to ­ensure the Australians were being treated fairly and humanely, and lobbying for their release.

“Our embassy in Tehran has made repeated representations to very senior Iranian officials in Tehran,” she said. “Given these conversations and the timing of the arrests, I can say these arrests do not relate to broader issues.

Firkin and King during a stopover in Bali.

“We have no reason to think that these arrests are connected to international concern over Iran’s nuclear program, United Nations sanctions or sanctions enforcement, or maritime security and the safety of civilian shipping.”

Peter Greste, who was detained in an Egyptian prison for more than a year and is now a journalism professor, said there was ­“absolutely no correct formula for this”, and sometimes public pressure worked better than staying ­silent. “It’s always going to be a complex balance of public pressure and diplomacy,” he said.

“Diplomats would always prefer to deal with this quietly. It’s ­always difficult to know when to make a judgment. But I think there’s also a point where public attention is really important.”

Professor Greste said a European diplomat had told him during his own detention to “keep up the Twitter campaigns, keep up the pressure from groups like Human Rights Watch”. He said while Egypt hadn’t cared about the public pressure campaign, third countries had taken notice.

Mr Morrison did not mention Iran by name when he announced Australia’s commitment to the maritime security mission in the Strait of Hormuz, referring instead to “destabilising behaviour” in the region that threatened Australia’s fuel security. He said the commitment of a navy frigate, a P-8A ­Poseidon maritime surveillance aircraft and specialist personnel to the operation was “modest, meaningful and time-limited”.

The Iranian government warned at the time that Australia’s “reputation and prestige” would be damaged by the commitment.