Japan confirms release of second citizen held in Iran
NHK’s Tehran bureau chief Shinnosuke Kawashima is believed to be the person released on bail on Monday.
Photo: Handout A Japanese national detained in Iran has been released on bail, Tokyo said on Tuesday.
The person, believed to be the Tehran bureau chief of Japan’s public broadcaster NHK, is the second to be released after the Japanese government announced last month that two of its citizens had been detained. “The Japanese embassy in Iran has confirmed that a Japanese national who was detained by Iranian authorities on January 20 was released on April 6 local time,” government spokesman Minoru Kihara said. “The ambassador in Iran directly met that person after release and confirmed they were in good health,” Kihara told reporters, without providing further details such as identity or charges.
NHK declined to comment on the release.
A man walks past a television screen showing a live broadcast of US President Donald Trump delivering national address on the Iran war in Tokyo on Thursday.
Photo: AFP In February, Radio Free Europe reported that NHK’s Tehran bureau chief Shinnosuke Kawashima had been arrested in Iran and transferred to a local prison.
At the time, NHK said “there is nothing we can answer at this stage” and that staff safety was a top priority.
Tokyo later confirmed a Japanese national had been detained in Iran and that it had been in contact with the person’s family and Iranian authorities.
Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi had previously requested his Iranian counterpart, Abbas Araghchi, release the Japanese nationals.
The first detainee has since returned to Japan.
Iran imposed an internet blackout soon after the US and Israel began hostilities against the Middle Eastern country on February 28. “Iran’s internet blackout is now the longest nation-scale internet shutdown on record in any country, exceeding all other comparable incidents in severity having entered its 37th consecutive day after 864 hours,” NetBlocks said in a tweet.
In another tweet, the monitor noted some countries had experienced intermittent or regional-level shutdowns over longer periods, while North Korea had never been connected to the global internet at all. “We constantly find ourselves searching for ways to reconnect, just to be able to hear reliable news,” a 47-year-old woman in the central city of Isfahan said on Saturday. “Being without internet feels like being without oxygen to me.
I feel trapped and suffocated,” a 53-year-old man in T
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