Ben Gurion Airport
Ben Gurion AirportFlash 90

Iranian journalist Neda Amin has landed in Israel. Amin had stood to be deported from Turkey back to Iran, from which she had fled three years ago and where she was expected to be put to death for her journalistic work with Israeli media.

Amin writes opinion pieces for Israeli newspaper the Times of Israel, among other projects.

On Sunday, Interior Minister Aryeh Deri announced that he had permitted a request to grant Amin asylum in Israel, but afterward it had been reported that Amin had been arrested in Turkey.

Previously, Chairman of the Jerusalem Association of Journalists Achiya Ginossar had written to Minister Deri, calling on him to grant asylum to Amin. "Neda Amin will likely be arrested immediately upon her arrival in Iran and is in danger of being executed for her journalistic work and the fact that she wrote a number of columns of opinion on the Times of Israel website in the Persian language," he said.

In the letter, members of the journalists' association asked that Amin be allowed to enter and stay in Israel, because she is an endangered refugee being persecuted for her journalistic work.

Minister Deri responded to the Association's call and approved the journalist's entry to Israel on a tourist visa: "This is a journalist whose life is in real danger, only because of writing columns on an Israeli news website. In these clear humanitarian circumstances, I authorize her entry without hesitation."