A Spanish man who was documenting his formidable journey by foot from Madrid to Doha for the 2022 FIFA World Cup has not been heard from since crossing into Iran three weeks in the past, his household stated Monday, stirring fears about his destiny in a rustic convulsed by mass unrest.
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The skilled trekker, former paratrooper and fervent soccer fan, 41-year-old Santiago Sánchez, was final seen in Iraq after climbing via 15 nations and extensively sharing his journey on a preferred Instagram account during the last 9 months. However his exuberant posts stopped immediately on Oct. 1, the day he entered Iran from the nation’s unstable northwestern border.
Sánchez’s household says his day by day WhatsApp updates stopped that day as properly. Weeks later, they concern the worst.
“We’re deeply nervous, we are able to’t cease crying, my husband and I,” his mom, Celia Cogedor, advised The Related Press.
Sánchez’s mother and father have reported him as lacking to Spain’s nationwide police and the Overseas Ministry.
However Spanish authorities say they don’t have any details about his whereabouts, including that the Spanish ambassador to Tehran was dealing with the matter.
Calls to the Iranian Overseas Ministry searching for remark weren’t instantly returned on Monday.
Sánchez’s reported disappearance in Iran — his final cease earlier than reaching Qatar for the World Cup — comes as protesters stand up throughout the Islamic Republic within the largest antigovernment motion in over a decade. The demonstrations erupted on Sept. 16 over the loss of life of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old girl taken into custody by Iran’s morality police for allegedly not adhering to the nation’s strict Islamic costume code.
Tehran has violently cracked down and blamed international enemies and Kurdish teams in Iraq for fomenting the unrest, with out providing proof. The Iranian Intelligence Ministry stated authorities had arrested 9 foreigners, principally Europeans, over their alleged hyperlinks to the protests final month. Westerners and twin nationals have more and more grow to be pawns in Iran’s inside political struggles and in tensions between Tehran and Western capitals, analysts say, with no less than a dozen twin nationals arrested lately on disputed spying expenses.
Sánchez arrived in Iraqi Kurdistan in late September, after trekking 1000’s of kilometers (miles) carrying a small suitcase in a wheeled cart, filled with little greater than a tent, water purification tablets and a gasoline range for his 11 months on the street. He stated he needed to learn the way others lived by residing amongst them earlier than reaching Qatar, the primary World Cup host nation within the Arab world, in time for Spain’s first match on Nov. 23.
“The thought of the journey is to encourage and encourage different individuals to indicate that they’ll go very far with little or no,” he advised the AP from Sulaymaniyah, a Kurdish metropolis in northeastern Iraq. “You possibly can go a great distance strolling.”
The day earlier than he disappeared, Sánchez had breakfast with a information in Sulaymaniyah. The information, who spoke on situation of anonymity for concern of reprisals, stated he tried to warn Sánchez in regards to the harmful political state of affairs in Iran as they parted methods.
Protests in Iran’s Kurdish area after Amini’s loss of life kindled the nationwide unrest nonetheless roiling Iran. In response, Iranian forces have unleashed drone and artillery assaults concentrating on Kurdish separatists in northern Iraq.
However Sánchez was undeterred and assured, the information stated.
“He didn’t look nervous in any respect. He advised me, ‘I sorted out the whole lot, don’t fear,’” he stated. They communicated via Google Translate, as Sánchez solely speaks Spanish.
Sánchez, the information added, deliberate to fulfill an Iranian household within the Kurdish city of Marivan — a scene of latest antigovernment protests. The household, delighted by Cogedor’s Instagram posts, had reached out and provided to host him.
After Sánchez crossed the border on Oct. 1, his messages turned sparse and cryptic, the information stated. Sánchez advised him that issues had been “very totally different” in Iran from Sulaymaniyah, the Iraqi metropolis crammed with parks and cafes.
“It’s been an extended story,” his final message learn.
Sánchez’s mother and father stated he had warned them he’d briefly lose web entry after reaching Iran.
“The nation is ‘sizzling,’ and there aren’t any communications,” Sánchez advised his father in his final message on Oct. 1, presumably a reference to the turmoil in Iran’s Kurdish area and the federal government’s disruption of web and fashionable communications functions utilized by protesters.
His mother and father tried to not fret when their messages didn’t ship. However their worries grew because the weeks handed.
The Spanish Overseas Ministry stated it had registered Sánchez’s border crossing into Iran and was not ruling out any potentialities.