Asylum bid: Iranian journalist uses cigarette break to flee foreign minister’s delegation in Sweden

A veteran Iranian journalist is claiming asylum in Sweden after travelling there with Iran’s foreign minister, then fleeing his government detail in what he says was a daring escape.

Amir Tohid Fazel, an editor at a conservative news agency, had accompanied Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif to Europe when he fled his hotel in Stockholm on August 21, slipping out for a cigarette break and then dashing away on foot.

Fazel described the getaway in an interview with Sweden’s public broadcaster this week, saying that surprise circumstances had forced him to flee.

According to Fazel, he was travelling with Zarif when a colleague messaged him to say that plain clothes police had arrived at their agency’s offices in Tehran.

The officers were carrying an arrest warrant for Fazel, he said.

“My colleague wanted me to tell my family, because he knew that I was not in Iran, so that they could leave the home,” he said in the interview, which the network said was conducted in a secret location.