A BRITISH travel blogger who was arrested in Iran and slung in a hellhole jail has been pictured for the first time.
Jolie King was seized with her Australia boyfriend Mark Firkin, allegedly for flying a drone without a licence near the capital Tehran.
The British-Australian blogger had been documenting their travels on Instagram and YouTube, but is now caged at the notorious Evin jail, The Times reports.
A woman jailed at the prison has called it a “black hole of evil”, with claims of torture and brutality from guards.
The couple wrote online: “Our biggest motivation behind the vlogs is to hopefully inspire anyone wanting to travel.
“And also try to break the stigma around travelling to countries which get a bad rap in the media.”
TRAVEL HELL
The editor of Persian-language TV channel Manoto TV said “there was a misunderstanding” and the couple were “unaware of the Iranian law which bans drone flights without a licence”.
Jolie is being held in the same wing as Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a 41-year-old British-Iranian mum-of one, held at the same jail since 2016 on spying charges.
A second unnamed British-Australian woman was also arrested in a separate incident.
The woman, an academic, is said to be held in solitary confinement and been sentenced to ten years in jail for an unknown offence, a source told The Times.
Our biggest motivation behind the vlogs is to hopefully inspire anyone wanting to travel, and try to break the stigma around travelling to countries which get a bad rap
Jolie King
Although it isn’t known what she was convicted of, foreigners are often jailed for a decade on espionage charges.
Jolie and her boyfriend posted updates of their travels during three years of travelling after leaving Australia.
But pals raised concerns when they stopped hearing updates from them a few weeks ago.
After travelling through Asia, they posted a video on June 30 from their first day in Iran.
Jolie said: “We just arrived. It’s actually really beautiful.”
It is believed the two Brits arrested are the first UK citizens without Iranian passports to be jailed in Iran in recent years.
Prisoners say cells in the prison are filthy, overcrowded and infested with beetles, comparing it to torture chamber.
The Australian government is taking the lead in both cases, with Britain urged to act.
We will not accept Iran using our citizens as diplomatic leverage
Dominic Raab
Boris Johnson is set to confront Iran abut the Brits being held at a UN meeting in New York this month.
In a letter to families of three Brits held in Iran, seen by The Times, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said: “We will not accept Iran using our citizens as diplomatic leverage.”
Ben Wallace, the defence secretary, said : “The message to Iran is to follow the international rule of law ,and to release people that have been detained in the way they have been over the last couple of years.”
It comes as Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary, claimed a tanker seized in Gibraltar has now delivered its oil to Syria.
Mr Raab said that the Adrian Darya-1’s oil was transferred in breach of EU sanctions.
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The 15,000-tonne ship was seized by a team of Royal Marines as it passed through the British territory’s waters on July 4 for trying to bust European sanctions and take oil to Syria.
Iran is preparing to release a British tanker that was seized in retaliation.
The Stena Impero was boarded in the Strait of Hormuz.
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