Since French President Emmanuel Macron’s explosive gamble to dissolve parliament before the summer, rumors have swirled over how the newly divided National Assembly would be represented in the administration.

Finally, Macron has revealed his cabinet – led by Prime Minister Michel Barnier marking a shift to the right and leaving left-leaning politicians out in the cold.

It comes more than two months after snap elections led to a hung parliament. The left-wing bloc New Popular Front (NFP) won the most seats but not enough for an absolute majority. Macron’s centrist Ensemble came second and Marine Le Pen’s far-right party, National Rally (RN), placed third.

Initially, RN was closer to the gates of power than ever before, then foiled mainly due to scores of left-wing and centrist candidates withdrawing from the second round in a strategic bid to avoid splitting the vote.

But Macron’s prime minister and cabinet bear little resemblance to July’s parliamentary election results.

The right-wing-heavy cabinet looks certain to spell more political turmoil in a country tired of its president. At risk of collapsing before the year is out, the new lineup will have to do a delicate dance with the far right in order to survive.

Drawing ministers from conservative and centrist ranks, Barnier is still running a minority government. And with the left-wing coalition vowing to topple it at the first available opportunity, his best chances of surviving a no-confidence vote is with RN’s tacit support.

By pandering to the right, Macron hopes his government can safeguard his legacy after the left pledged to repeal some of his key policies, such as controversial pension reforms.

New faces include veteran conservative Bruno Retailleau at the interior ministry whose hardline stance on immigration appeals to the far right. The 63-year-old former senator also opposed gay marriage and voted against enshrining abortion rights in the French constitution.

Despite winning the most seats in July’s vote, the left-wing alliance was not given a single position on the 39-member team.

“A government of the general election losers” is how French far-left firebrand Jean-Luc Melenchon labeled the new cabinet shortly after it was announced. Meanwhile, RN leader Jordan Bardella said the government “had no future whatsoever” and that it was a return to “Macronism.”

With Macron unable to dissolve parliament for at least a year from the election, concessions on immigration, security and taxes will have to be made to placate the far right and get bills adopted by the 577-seat assembly.

One of Barnier’s priorities is to submit a 2025 budget plan addressing France’s mounting deficit and putting forward unpopular spending cuts. Barnier could invoke a controversial constitutional tool – article 49:3 – to push it through, though this would expose the government to a vote of no confidence as the parliament would need to approve it.

Furthermore, that would risk the same ire Macron’s penultimate government suffered when he used this constitutional clause to push through everything from budgets to pension reforms. Since then, 49:3 has become a byword for Macron’s Jupiterean style of government: impatient of consensus and seen by many as disrespectful of the will of voters.

Whether through political survival or shrewd politicking, the ironies of Macron’s latest government are striking. The president – a former left-wing minister – is now beholden to the support of the far right. Yet in this summer’s snap election, they are the very group Macron tried to keep out of government through his party’s “cordon sanitaire” voting alliance with France’s left.

Faced with three acrimonious blocs and under pressure from all sides, even Barnier’s strong negotiating tactics and reputation for consensus-seeking might not save him.

Wole Soyinka became the first Black African to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1986, and is now one of the continent’s most revered authors. But two decades earlier, he was sent to prison without trial for speaking out about the civil war in his native Nigeria.

While in solitary confinement he scrawled notes and poems using meat bones, handmade ink and toilet paper. Those ideas became the memoir “The Man Died,” published in 1972, which is now the framework of a movie of the same name that recounts the playwright and novelist’s life at the height of the civil war.

The following interview was edited and condensed for clarity.

Larry Madowo: What did it feel like to go to prison just because you were agitating for what you felt was right?

Wole Soyinka: It was a very testing period for me. Twenty-two months in total isolation, denied books, denied paper, my cell constantly searched, nothing at all to sustain my mind.

I think one of the most cunning categories of humanity that I’ve ever encountered is the prisoner. The prisoner has to survive. It’s a survival test, not a question of self-advancement.

And (in solitary confinement) what is the most space-economic enterprise you could undertake? The mental enterprise, calculations, mathematics. I made my own ink with dirt; I made my own pen from the bones in the meat of my food, creating a complete self-sustaining mental micro-world of my own. It was also a dangerous period for the mind.

I remember when I used to hallucinate, so I would leap up and try and destroy those kinds of hallucinatory images that came out. But eventually, I mastered all that period, and after that, I began recollecting those formulae in geometry and trigonometry which I had hated, and I began pulling them back, making calculations on the ground.

Believe it or not, I rediscovered the theory of permutations and combinations. Those things I had hated in school became my sustenance.

LM: You wrote about those prison years in a memoir which has now been turned into a movie, “The Man Died.” Have you seen it yet?

WS:  No. Let me put it this way, turning anything in my life into something other people can watch, pains me. I assisted them in trying to locate a house in which I hid and operated during the civil war. They were looking for something close to one we were using during that period.

But it’s not just about me alone, it’s also about a particular period. I might watch it eventually, but not immediately. Even this very interview we’re doing, I won’t watch. It always takes a while to bring myself to watch me.

LM: You don’t make a big fuss about your birthday, but you just turned 90, which is a big deal.

WS: Well, the annoying thing is that I don’t feel 90. But I will confess that I do share some kind of ritualistic aspect of the birthday. So it’s not a question of dislike, it’s just that I like to have it on my own. Usually what I do on my birthday is disappear into the forest. That’s my normal way of spending birthdays.

LM:  Do you remember when you became politically active? 

WS:  I was a great eavesdropper on my parents’ conversation, especially around my father’s (a school principal and priest in the Anglican church) colleagues. I remember sitting behind an armchair listening.

My mother would arrive and report what had gone on. My father’s whole circle was also involved that way, so I would say that this was the beginning of my political involvement.

When the women rioted in this very town where we are now, Abeokuta, my mother was involved as a lieutenant of (women’s rights activist) Mrs. Ransome Kuti, (famed Afrobeat musician) Fela Kútì’s mother. So as a child, when all the rioting was taking place, I became a courier between the various women’s camps passing messages.

LM: Seeing your mother involved in this political activism appeared to have planted the seed for your life’s work.

WS: That’s correct. Being actually within the environment, that struggle of militancy against an unacceptable situation that these women were facing, how their goods were being seized by police in the marketplaces, if they didn’t pay taxes, some of them beaten up, roughed up, and so on.

Being part and parcel of this and seeing them set upon on their way to go and pass more oppressive legislation, I took the side of the women most naturally (and) that reflected in my writing. No question at all.

LM: There’s a legend about you sneaking into a radio station and swapping out a political speech for something more critical, what’s the truth?

WS: Well, the first thing I have to remind you is that I was tried and acquitted. Yes, it’s true, there’s no point in denying it any longer that I felt compelled to stop the further broadcast of false results.

I witnessed firsthand the destruction of polling booths, even the tearing up of results. I was already heavily politicized at that time, but when I saw this oppressive regime about to reinstall itself, and people have to remember, it was the most cynical regime, which went so far as to declare on radio to say, “we don’t give a damn if you vote for us,” it just triggered my already highly honed militant sense. So it was part of an ongoing struggle on so many levels. Yeah, guilty, but there was no alternative at that time.

LM: After receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1986, it took a long time for another (Black) African to receive that honor. What did that feel like at the time?

WS: Isolated. I was most relieved when the next African came because so much was demanded of you. It was like overnight your constituency expanded simply because you come from the African continent. On the one hand, of course, a sense of recognition, which is very good. Opening certain doors, but then there were not many doors which I was looking to enter anyway, I just enjoyed my profession, full stop.

But at the same time, especially in societies like ours, it exposed you a lot more. I always remind people that one of the most brutal dictators we had here, Sani Abacha, would’ve gone to his grave a happy man if he hanged a Nobel Laureate, if he may be able to put that on his CV. As it is, he had to be content with hanging an activist, a writer, and his eight companions. I’m referring to Ken Saro-Wiwa.

So it exposed me to very great dangers because I refuse to back down on my beliefs, on my activities simply because I’ve become a Nobel laureate. Why should I stop things which preoccupied me before the Nobel?

But it was grand when one after the other (African Nobel winners) began to come in. Now, I’ve been able to enjoy for some time now being a Nobelist rather being feeling sometimes like a showpiece.

LM: You told some students of an exchange program named after you that you still hope to go to space. What’s your fascination with space?

WS: It began as a child, and I was just fascinated by the stars and constellations. I wrote in one of my essays that I used to close my eyes and imagine a state of total nothingness, and from that, the notion of actually going to space. I recollect when Armstrong stepped on the moon, I was in prison at the time, so that childhood exercise also served me in good stead. My prison bars dissolved overnight just imagining them on the moon. Then space exploration began.

One day, by mail, one of the associations of human development that I belong to had some free tickets for a zero-gravity flight simulator; by then I was 70 years old. I went to San Jose (California) and had my space experience and that is one of the most thrilling experiences of my life.

LM: Richard Branson is taking people to space these days.

WS: If Branson came now and said, I’ve found space for you, I would terminate this interview right now. I’m still in reasonably good shape and I think I can take the gravity stress; I’m convinced I can. I’m willing to do anything. Shoot me into space, I don’t even mind if something happens over there, that’s okay. Then I’ve experienced that childhood obsession.

Israel launched an intense barrage of airstrikes across swathes of Lebanon on Monday in what was the deadliest day for the country since at least the 2006 war fought between Israel and the powerful Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah.

Terror and despair gripped Lebanese residents as Israeli bombs killed at least 492 people, including dozens of children and wounded more than 1,600 others, authorities said, as residents fled their homes desperate to reach safety.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his country is changing the “balance of power” on its northern front as its military said it struck 1,600 Hezbollah assets across Lebanon on Monday and has not ruled out the possibility of a ground invasion.

Several countries have warned the strikes increase the risk of a wider regional war and have called for urgent international pressure to de-escalate the situation. Despite the scale and intensity of Monday’s strikes, neither side is calling the current escalation a war.

Here’s what we know.

What happened?

On Monday, Israel intensified its air campaign on Hezbollah, launching “extensive strikes” targeting the Iran-backed militant group in Lebanon. It marked the deadliest day of Israeli strikes in Lebanon since the 2006 war and hit multiple parts of the country, mainly in the southern and eastern parts of the country near Lebanon’s border with Syria and where the militant group has a strong presence.

Women, children and medics were among those killed and wounded, Lebanon’s health ministry said Monday. It is unclear how many of the casualties were civilians or Hezbollah militants, but many of the locations described by Israel as Hezbollah targets are also residential neighborhoods and villages.

Isarel said that among the Hezbollah targets were “cruise missiles” that had a reach of hundreds of kilometers, rockets, and explosive warheads, according to military spokesperson Daniel Hagari, who claimed the munitions were stored in civilian homes.

Residents began to flee their homes after their phones began pinging with text messages from Israel and calls from unknown numbers urging them to evacuate immediately. A popular Lebanese radio station said it was hacked and its broadcast interrupted by an Israeli evacuation warning. The Israeli military warned civilians to leave areas in which Hezbollah operates, such as those used to store weapons.

Residents said they had little time to flee to safety before the bombing started. One resident in the southern city of Tyre on the coast of Lebanon said he heard Israeli warplanes “raining” bombs near his home from 5 a.m. local time on Monday.

Classes in schools and universities were canceled across the country and some flights to and from Beirut were suspended. Many schools were closed to be used as shelters for those seeking refuge.

On Tuesday, Hezbollah said it fired multiple rocket barrages into northern Israel, targeting the Ramat David airbase, Meggido airfield, and the Amos base, all located in the vicinity of the town of Afula in northern Israel.

Were civilians targeted?

Israel said it was targeting Hezbollah infrastructure, but video shows destruction of residential areas and the large death toll reflects the scale and intensity of the strikes.

The nearly 500 killed on Monday alone is roughly half the number of Lebanese killed throughout the entire 34-day war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006.

Israeli warplanes were also seen flying over different parts of the country late afternoon, including over Mount Lebanon where Hezbollah does not have a notable presence.

Lebanon’s representative to the United Nations General Assembly said there was a mass “exodus” of people fleeing. One Lebanese NGO said more than 100,000 people had been displaced.

Residents described seeing buildings collapse and towns being emptied, while images and video show roads blocked by heavy traffic in both directions as people try to flee. Reuters video  from the southern suburbs of Beirut showed debris from damaged buildings and shards of glass littering the ground.

“We have nowhere to go, we have nothing, Mohamed Hamayda, a Syrian man displaced from Deir al-Zahrani, told Agence France-Presse news agency.

Lebanon’s Health Minister Dr. Firass Abiad said convoys of vehicles evacuating people from areas under fire had been “targeted,” as had two ambulances, a fire truck and a medical center. Two first responders were killed, he added.

The Israeli military said it was trying to “mitigate the harm to Lebanese civilians as much as possible,” Hagari said. Netanyahu accused Hezbollah of long using civilians as human shields while aiming rockets at Israeli citizens.

Why is Israel attacking Lebanon?

Hezbollah and Israel have been in conflict for decades – but the two have ramped up their cross-border attacks on each other since last October, when Israel’s war in Gaza began following the Palestinian militant group Hamas’ deadly October 7 attack on Israel.

Hezbollah is part of a Tehran-led alliance spanning Yemen, Syria, Gaza, and Iraq that has attacked Israel and its allies since the war with Hamas began. The group has said it will continue striking Israeli targets as long as the war in Gaza goes on.

The increasing escalations have once again brought the region to the edge of an all-out war.

Last week, Hezbollah – one of the most powerful paramilitary forces in the region – was left reeling after a deadly twin attack by Israel, when pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah members simultaneously exploded across the country. The attack was followed by an Israeli strike on a building in a densely populated southern Beirut, which killed at least 45 people including a top commander and other senior operatives, as well as women and children.

The following days saw some of the most intense exchanges of fire between Israel and Hezbollah in almost a year of war in Gaza, as the Lebanese militant group fired projectiles deeper into Israeli territory than has previously been seen and Israel fired hundreds of projectiles into southern Lebanon.

It came as Israel made a new war objective to return diplaced residents to their homes near the northern border after being evacuated due to Hezbollah attacks.

Though weakened militarily and its secretive lines of communication exposed, Hezbollah’s second-in-command has declared “a new chapter” in the confrontations which he called “a battle without limits.”

Is Lebanon and Israel at war?

While the airstrikes, attacks and rhetoric from both Israel and Hezbollah suggest they are in open conflict, neither side is calling the current escalation a war.

The head of Israel’s military Herzi Halevi said it is “preparing for the next phases” and Netanyahu in a televised speech told the people of Lebanon that his country is not at war with them, but with Hezbollah.

There is a renewed effort from the international community to de-escalate the situation. Qatar, one of the key mediators in talks between Israel and Hamas, said the region is on the “brink of the abyss” and France has requested an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council to address the strikes.

World leaders will be gathering in New York for the UN General Assembly this week and there are feverish efforts behind the scenes to convince Israel not to escalate further and launch a ground incursion into Lebanon.

Though the United States is Israel’s closest ally and biggest weapons supplier, a senior State Department official said the US and its partners are attempting to find a diplomatic solution.

Michael Kovrig, one of two Canadian men detained in China for more than 1,000 days on alleged spying charges, has described being put in solitary confinement for six months and relentlessly interrogated in what he said was psychological torture.

Dubbed the “Michaels,” Kovrig and fellow Canadian national Michael Spavor were at the heart of a bitter tussle between Beijing and Ottawa that continues to sour diplomatic relations to this day.

“It was psychologically, absolutely, the most grueling, painful thing I’ve ever been through,” Kovrig told CBC News in his first extensive public remarks since being released from Chinese prison three years ago.

Kovrig said he was walking home with his partner, who was six months pregnant at the time, from dinner in Beijing on December 10, 2018 when he was seized by Chinese authorities.

“We came up a spiral staircase right in front of the plaza in front of my apartment building, and boom,” Kovrig recalled. “There’s a dozen men in black with cameras on them surrounding us, shouting in Chinese, ‘That’s him.’”

Kovrig, a former diplomat who was working as a senior advisor for the International Crisis Group think tank, was detained at the same time as Spavor, a Canadian consultant who worked extensively in North Korea, on alleged spying charges.

The pair became embroiled in a three-year diplomatic row that began earlier that month when Canadian authorities arrested Meng Wanzhou, chief financial officer of Chinese tech giant Huawei, in Vancouver on US fraud charges.

Kovrig and Spavor were only freed after US prosecutors dropped the extradition request and agreed to release Meng, nearly two years later.

Beijing consistently denied any connection between the arrests of Meng and the Michaels and said Kovrig and Spavor were released on bail for health reasons.

Chinese officials did not publicly disclose any evidence against Spavor or Kovrig, or detailed information relating to their trials, which were held behind closed doors.

‘Chill down my spine’

After he was detained, Kovrig told CBC News he was handcuffed, blindfolded and thrown into a black SUV, then taken to a padded cell that would be his home for the next six months.

“At that point they said, ‘You are under suspicion of endangering China’s state security. You are going to be interrogated,’” Kovrig said.

“A chill went down my spine.”

Kovrig said he was held in complete isolation in a cell under fluorescent lights for six months, in contravention of UN standards. He said he was interrogated for 6 to 9 hours daily, locked in a chair for hours on end, and at times was forced to survive on three bowls of rice per day.

“They are trying to bully and torment and terrorize and coerce you into accepting their false version of reality,” Kovrig said.

After six months, Kovrig said he was moved to a larger cell with plexiglass windows, which he shared with a dozen cellmates.

“That was kind of like moving from hell to limbo,” Kovrig said.

Kovrig and Spavor were released in September 2021. Kovrig stepped off the plane in Toronto and hugged his separated wife Vina Nadjibulla, who had campaigned tirelessly for his release, in a touching moment that reverberated across the country.

He also met his daughter, who his partner gave birth to while Kovrig was in prison, for the first time. He described the meeting as “the most fantastic, heartwarming feeling you can imagine.”

“I’ll never forget that sense of wonder, of everything being new and wonderful again, of pushing my daughter on a swing and her saying to her mother, ‘Mummy, I’m so happy.’”

Hurricane John struck Mexico’s southern coast on Monday night after rapidly strengthening into a major Category 3 storm, triggering warnings of ‘life-threatening’ floods and mudslides.

Packing maximum sustained winds of 120 mph (193 kph), the storm made landfall south-southwest of the city of Marquelia in Guerrero state at around 9:15 p.m. local time, according to the National Hurricane Center.

Just a day ago, the storm was pacing at 35 mph (56 kph), but it underwent two rapid intensifications in a 24-hour period, ramping up speed by more than three times.

“This heavy rainfall will likely cause significant and possibly catastrophic, life-threatening flash flooding and mudslides to the Mexican States of Chiapas, Oaxaca, and southeast Guerrero, particularly in areas near the coast,” the center said.

Oaxaca state is a popular tourist spot known for its beautiful landscapes and beaches.

Oaxaca’s governor said the state government had evacuated 3,000 people and set up 80 shelters, while authorities had suspended classes in several costal zones on Tuesday, the Associated Press reported.

Businesses in Puerto Escondido, a tourist destination in the southern part of the state, have closed after authorities ordered the suspension of all work on the area’s main beaches, the news agency reported.

Ana Aldai, who works for a restaurant there, told AP she was “a little bit distressed” because notice from authorities came quickly.

“There was no opportunity to make the necessary purchases,” she said.

Torrential rainfall of 10 to 20 inches, with isolated totals near 30 inches, could pummel areas along the Oaxaca coast to southeast Guerrero until Thursday.

The coastal areas of Chiapas are also expected to be hit by rainfall of six to 12 inches, with isolated totals around 15 inches, during the same period.

The rainfall could cause a life-threatening storm surge, producing significant coastal flooding near the landfall location, the National Hurricane Center said.

The surge will be accompanied by large and destructive waves in coastal areas, it added.

Tokyo, Japan (AP) — Japan said its warplanes used flares to warn a Russian reconnaissance aircraft to leave northern Japanese airspace on Monday.

Japanese Defense Minister Minoru Kihara told reporters that the Russian Il-38 plane breached Japan’s airspace above Rebun Island, just off the coast of the country’s northernmost main island of Hokkaido, for up to a minute in three instances, during its five-hour flight in the area.

It came a day after a joint fleet of Chinese and Russian warships sailed around Japanese northern coasts. Kihara said the airspace violation could be related to a joint military exercise that Russia and China announced earlier this month.

Japan scrambled an undisclosed number of F-15 and F-35 fighter jets, which used flares for the first time after the Russian aircraft apparently ignored their warnings, Kihara said.

“The airspace violation was extremely regrettable,” Kihara said. He said Japan “strongly protested” to Russia through diplomatic channels and demanded preventive measures.

“We will carry out our warning and surveillance operations as we pay close attention to their military activities,” he said.

Kihara said the use of flares was a legitimate response to airspace violation and “we plan to use it without hesitation.”

Japanese defense officials are highly concerned about growing military cooperation between the China and Russia, and China’s increasingly assertive activity around Japanese waters and airspace. It led Tokyo to significantly reinforce defenses of southwestern Japan, including remote islands that are considered key to Japan’s defense strategy in the region.

Earlier in September, Russian military aircraft flew around southern Japanese airspace. A Chinese Y-9 reconnaissance aircraft briefly violated Japan’s southern airspace in late August.

The Chinese aircraft carrier Liaoning, accompanied by two destroyers, sailed between Japan’s westernmost island of Yonaguni and nearby Iriomote, entering close to Japan’s waters.

According to Japan’s military, it scrambled jets nearly 669 times between April 2023 and March 2024, about 70% of the time against Chinese military aircraft, though that did not include airspace violations.

Japan and Russia are in a teritorial dispute over a group of Russian-held islands, which the former Soviet Union seized from Japan at the end of World War II. The feud has prevented the two countries from signing a peace treaty formally ending their war hostilities.

An American woman who went missing while on a hike on Table Mountain in Cape Town, South Africa, has died and her body has been recovered, authorities said on Monday.

The woman has been identified as a 20-year-old student from North Carolina named Brook Cheuvront.

Cheuvront was reported missing on Saturday after a tracking app she was using stopped updating and friends could not reach her, said SANParks spokesman JP Louw.

The management of SANParks, which manages Table Mountain and other national parks, said the cause of death was still unclear and an inquest into her death has been opened.

An initial search was conducted by rangers, wilderness search and rescue members, and trail runners until late Saturday evening when it was no longer practical to continue, said Louw.

An aircraft joined the search the next day and helped to locate the body.

South African authorities have urged people to avoid hiking on their own, suggesting it be done in groups of at least four people.

An Iranian Grammy Award winner said on Monday he was pardoned from a three-year sentence for a song that became an anthem to the 2022 protests that rocked the country following the death of Mahsa Amini in police custody.

Shervin Hajipour, who received the first-ever Grammy for best song for social change in 2023, uploaded a video story on Instagram, looking overcome with emotion and saying: “A new order had been issued regarding amnesty, and it included my case which has been completely dismissed,” adding that he learned about the case dismissal on Sunday.

His song, “Baraye,” or “For” in English, begins with: “For dancing in the streets,” “for the fear we feel when we kiss.”

The lyrics list reasons posted online by young Iranians explaining why they had protested against Iran’s ruling theocracy, after Amini died for not wearing her mandated headscarf to the liking of security forces.

The protests quickly escalated into calls to overthrow Iran’s clerical rulers. A subsequent security crackdown killed more than 500 people, with more than 22,000 detained.

On Friday, Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, pardoned and commuted the sentences of 2,887 prisoners. It is unclear whether Hajipour’s case was part of the amnesty order.

Two months ago, Hajipour announced that he was ordered to head to prison to serve the sentence of three years and eight months that a court handed him in March.

He had already served some prison time but was out on bail in 2023 pending the court’s decision.

Namazi previously spoke with Amanpour by phone in March 2023 from inside Iran’s notorious Evin Prison, in what was an unprecedented interview. He was the longest-held Iranian-American prisoner, excluded from three separate deals that freed other detained Americans during the Obama and Trump administrations.

‘The smell of freedom’

On 18 September 2023, Namazi stepped off the plane and onto American soil. At the top of the airplane steps, he paused to breathe in the air. It was, he tells Amanpour, a tribute to what his uncle had told Namazi and his brother Babak when they first immigrated to the United States in 1983.

“Can you smell that?” Namazi’s uncle asked his young nephews. “That is the smell of freedom.” Forty years later, Siamak Namazi emerged into the night air after eight years in prison. “I remembered what he said. And I felt it this time. I felt the smell of freedom.”

Now, he says, “the most dominant feeling that I have is gratitude… particularly (towards) President (Joe) Biden, who made a very difficult choice and struck the deal.” But, that said, he explains it has been “very difficult” to adjust to life outside.

After so long behind bars, he even had to set an alarm to remind himself just to leave the apartment. “I remember once I hadn’t left for three days, and I realized why. I just wasn’t used to doing that.”

Today, he is still putting together the pieces of his life. “It’s an eight-year earthquake that hits your life – and it leaves a lot of destruction.

“But I would say I do feel very free in the US – and I tried to live the freest life I could, even when I was in Evin.”

‘They wanted a death sentence’

Namazi was born in Iran and, after moving to America age 12, he had returned to his country of birth many times. In 2015, he went back for a funeral and felt little reason to worry. It was a period he describes as “the peak of Iran-US relations,” with high-level delegations from both countries in Vienna, Austria, to negotiate what would become the Iran nuclear deal, or JCPOA.

But at the airport, as he tried to leave, he recalls how everything changed. He was approached “by a man in a plain suit who said, ‘Come with me.’” Namazi says he refused and asked for identification. Then, as the man went to get a uniformed official to enforce his demand, Namazi urgently messaged his brother: “Pulling me aside at airport.”

“After that, I was interrogated off site illegally for three months and then I was finally arrested. I was charged formally with cooperating with a hostile state – referring to the United States of America.” It took six years for him to secure his full file and discover exactly what he was accused of.

He says that Iran’s authorities claimed that “for three decades, (Namazi) had been building a network within Iran to infiltrate and topple the Islamic Republic with the cooperation of the hostile US state. Now, I was arrested at 44. So, these guys are pretty much claiming that when I was learning to skateboard with my buddy Dave in White Plains, New York, I was actually subverting the Islamic Republic.”

While today he almost laughs at the absurdity of the “ridiculous” charges he faced, he knows the danger he was in. “They wanted a death sentence for me.”

Namazi was not naïve. He knew that the real reason he was being taken was to function as a bargaining chip for the regime. That, he says, gave him some comfort – but not for long.

“I assumed that because I’m a hostage and I have value, they will not harm me. Unfortunately, that assumption was proven wrong.”

‘Profound effect’

Soon after his arrest, Namazi says, he was “thrown in a solitary cell… the size of a closet.” When facing his interrogators, he says he was told that “unless you cooperate… you are going to be here until your teeth and your hair are the same color. And our methodology of how we’re talking is going to change.”

That, he says, was a clear threat of violence.

In all, Namazi endured around eight months of solitary confinement, along with what he calls “unutterable indignities.” He was blindfolded and beaten, but the worst was the “humiliation,” he says.

“That I’m not comfortable talking about,” he tells Amanpour. “And I mean unutterable – because it had a profound effect on me. I still haven’t even gotten to talking about it fully in therapy.”

Eventually, Namazi’s mother was permitted to visit. The first visit was before he was beaten, but even then, his appearance had changed so much that she didn’t recognize her own son. “I looked like Saddam (Hussein) when they pulled him out of that hole. I had (a) long beard,” he recalls. “I remember her sobbing and I remember trying to make her laugh by telling her, ‘I look like Saddam.’”

After that visit, he says, the beatings began, and lasted for weeks. “It’s much scarier than I could tell you,” Namazi recalls with emotion – particularly as he knew that the Canadian-Iranian photographer Zahra Kazemi had died in similar circumstances in 2003. “I knew how unsafe I was.”

After weeks of this, his mother was permitted to visit again – and this time, Namazi was prepared. He says his guards warned him to say nothing of his mistreatment and flanked him as he entered the room. “Even before sitting, I say, ‘Hi, mom. These guys have been torturing me. I need you to go public on this.’” Recalling the moment today, Namazi is almost overcome by emotion. “I put her through a lot.”

During his eight years of captivity, Namazi saw other prisoners being released in deals between the US and Iran on three separate occasions – despite, he claims, the US government being fully aware of the torture and abuse he was suffering following correspondence between his parents and the State Department.

Feeling abandoned by his government, Namazi decided he faced a choice: he could either be patient and try to stay sane, trusting that the authorities would eventually negotiate a deal that secured his freedom; or he could fight.

“I think part of my reaction to the unutterable indignities was that I have to gain my own respect back for myself. I had to fight them.”

High-risk interview

“I fought every day, every single day,” Namazi says. “I had a program: I’d get up, it was organized, you know, think about how to be a pain in the ass.”

As the years went by, Namazi tried many things, including smuggling out an opinion piece for The New York Times and going on hunger strike. But, he says, “I basically got no love back.” More was needed. So Namazi suggested to his pro bono lawyer in the US, Jared Genser, that perhaps it was time to do an interview.

In the end, Namazi’s calculus was remarkably simple. If he did the interview, he might be beaten up and thrown back in solitary. “I knew I could live (with) that,” he says. But if he chose not to do the interview, and there was no deal to free him, he’d always wonder if it could’ve got him out.

Speaking to Amanpour today, he says, is a little less high-stakes. “It is such a joy to be talking to you and not worrying about someone dragging me to a solitary cell somewhere because of it,” he tells her.

As Amanpour brought the phone interview to an end, Namazi made one last request: to address Biden directly, appealing to him “to just do what’s necessary to end this nightmare and bring us home.”

Coming home

This “desperate measure” was one way that Namazi felt he could get attention and try to lend some urgency to the ongoing negotiations.

He sees it as a crucial lesson for anyone in a similar situation: “If you are taken as a hostage, you need to make noise.” This creates more “political value” for a US president to make what otherwise might be a “politically costly” deal to release someone, he believes.

In September 2023, Namazi was finally released along with four fellow dual nationals: Emad Shargi, Morad Tahbaz, and two other prisoners whose identities were not disclosed by officials at the time.

The unfreezing of Iranian assets under the deal prompted intense criticism from former President Donald Trump and his allies – despite Trump having agreed to two prisoner swap deals with Iran during his time in office. Before it was finalized, 26 Senate Republicans wrote to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to argue that it set an “incredibly dangerous precedent.”

But Namazi says he knew that, without a deal, he wasn’t getting out – a point his interrogators made “extremely clear.”

“We have a duty to get out our people from foreign dungeons when they have done nothing,” he adds, and “unfortunately, we have to make distasteful deals to get out our people.”

More importantly, Namazi feels he is more aware than most of the nature of the Iranian regime.

“I’ll tell you something: no one is as angry, no one is as disgusted at the fact that the Islamic Republic, this horrible regime, profited from blighting my life, than me and the other hostages and our families.

“I spent 2,989 days in their dungeon… They have done things that I’m not able to tell my therapist yet, and I still, I can’t even speak about it… I am upset that they profited from this. But what other choice is there? Are you just going let an American rot?”

No debriefing

Safely back in America, Namazi is full of ideas for changing how the US deals with hostage diplomacy. He likens it to “a game of rugby. We need to stop playing political chess with it. It’s different.”

He argues that the West can do far more to deter this sort of hostage-taking, from cracking down on international money-laundering that funds the lavish lifestyles of autocrats and their cronies, to restricting the visas they receive when visiting the United Nations in New York.

And it’s not just an American problem: Evin Prison is “a dystopian United Nations of hostages,” Namazi says, with many countries’ citizens behind bars.

“We can upend this business model very quickly. We have to make it unprofitable,” he says.

Namazi believes he could offer more but says he was not debriefed by the US government on his many interactions with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.

He also feels there was a notable lack of support structure once he arrived in the US.

In reflecting on the year since his release, Namazi’s focus returns to Biden.

Emotion in his voice, Namazi tells Amanpour that, eventually, he’d like to meet the man who freed him.

“I would really love to shake President Biden’s hand one day. I really would.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky toured a Pennsylvania ammunition plant on Sunday as he began a key visit to the United States in which he is expected to present his blueprint to defeat Russia to President Joe Biden and other allies.

Zelensky will fully outline his “victory plan” – which includes Kyiv’s long-stated request to use long-range missiles on targets inside Russia – to Biden for the first time during the visit before sharing it with both presidential candidates, US lawmakers and international partners, he said.

“This fall will determine the future of this war,” Zelensky posted on X from his plane before landing in the US. “Together with our partners, we can strengthen our positions as needed for our victory – a shared victory for a truly just peace.”

Zelensky kicked off his visit at the Scranton Army Ammunition Plant in Biden’s hometown, where he thanked workers for providing Ukraine with munitions and said the facility would ramp up production of 155mm artillery shells crucial for Kyiv’s war effort.

“It is in places like this where you can truly feel that the democratic world can prevail,” he said. “Thanks to people like these – in Ukraine, in America, and in all partner countries – who work tirelessly to ensure that life is protected.”

Zelensky has been pushing Ukraine’s allies to ease restrictions on weapons and although there have been signs of the US shifting its stance, he said Friday they have yet to be given permission.

“We do have long-range weapons. But let’s just say not the amount we need,” Zelensky told reporters, adding that “neither the US nor the United Kingdom gave us permission to use these weapons on the territory of Russia.”

He has blamed the allies’ hesitation to authorize such use on escalation fears, but said he was hopeful his arguments would be heard during his visit.

Zelensky is expected to travel to New York, where he will speak at the United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday and meet with leaders of the Global South, the G7, Europe and international organizations.

He will then travel to Washington for talks with Biden and Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris.

“I want to see what she thinks about this victory plan,” he said of Harris on Friday.

“As I told you, the plan includes not only what is needed from Biden today. But it also includes the fact that we will have a different situation after November. That is, there will be a new president in the United States. And we need to talk to each of the candidates about their perception of this.”

Harris has expressed her support for Ukraine and NATO allies, indicating she would continue Biden’s policies of backing Ukraine, if she is elected president.

Zelensky also plans to meet with Republican presidential candidate, former President Donald Trump, who in a recent debate refused to say if he wanted Ukraine to win the war.