GURBULAK, Türkiye: The Iranian girls’s soccer crew crossed the Turkish border into Iran on Wednesday (Mar 18) to finish a fraught return journey from Australia, after five members withdrew asylum claims that they had lodged there.
Australia had granted humanitarian visas to 6 gamers and one assist workers member after they sought asylum, saying they feared attainable persecution if they returned to Iran.
Considerations over their security surfaced when a number of gamers did not sing the national anthem at a girls’s Asian Cup match earlier this month after america and Israel launched the conflict in opposition to Iran. Iranian state tv had labelled them “wartime traitors”.
The crew, which flew into Istanbul on Tuesday, took a flight to Igdir in jap Türkiye on Wednesday morning.
The gamers emerged from Igdir Airport pulling their baggage and chatted in entrance of the terminal earlier than boarding a bus to the border. One among them briefly smiled and waved at a TV digicam earlier than the bus departed.
After a visit of round two hours to the frontier, they went by means of passport management on the Gurbulak border gate earlier than crossing over into Iran.
