“My dream has come true.” Former Iran detainee, Anoosheh Ashoori, has finished the London Marathon just seven months after he was freed from Tehran's notorious Evin prison. In August 2017, while visiting his elderly mother in Tehran, the British-Iranian dual national was bundled into a van, blindfolded and eventually convicted of spying for Israel's intelligence service Mossad, despite having lived in the UK for 20 years. He denied all charges. During his almost five-year detainment and when he was allowed, Anoosheh began rigorously running in circles in a small prison yard. “There were a group of people who participated in exercises, I asked if I could join and they welcomed me,” he remembers. “I discovered that it wouldn’t take 10 minutes before I was out of breath, but I persevered and it became 15 minutes, 20 minutes.” The detainees were given a two-hour timeslot in the gym, Anoosheh tells us that the day he managed to run for two hours straight he treated everybody to cake. That same day a political prisoner presented him with a book by the Japanese writer Haruki Murakami, who is also a marathon runner, and it inspired him to dream of running a marathon himself one day. Anoosheh was eventually released earlier this year along with fellow detained Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe. Their release came after the UK paid back money it owed Tehran for a tank deal in the 1970s. "It wasn't me who was important," Mr Ashoori said. "It was the passport that was being arrested - but the holder of that passport was me." Whilst he ran the marathon for the charities Amnesty International UK and Hostage International, he dedicated the run to the current women's movement in Iran: "It's a women's movement and men are actually supporting women, this is such a beautiful thing... this has never happened during the last 43 years," he tells us. Click the link in our bio to hear Anoosheh Ashoori’s full interview. 📸 : 1. Anoosheh Ashoori with his daughter Elika after finishing the London Marathon. Credit: Elinka Ashoori 2. Training with his son Aryan. Credit: Press Association 3. With Nazanin Zaghari-Radcliffe after finally being released #Iran #iranprotests