{"id":7600,"date":"2026-02-23T12:16:15","date_gmt":"2026-02-23T12:16:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/2026\/02\/23\/afghan-merchants-rescued-tehran-25-days-kidnapping\/"},"modified":"2026-02-23T12:16:15","modified_gmt":"2026-02-23T12:16:15","slug":"afghan-merchants-rescued-tehran-25-days-kidnapping","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/2026\/02\/23\/afghan-merchants-rescued-tehran-25-days-kidnapping\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Afghan Merchants Rescued in Tehran After 25 Days of Kidnapping"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Iranian media have reported that Tehran police rescued two Afghan merchants who had been held captive for 25 days in a well located in the Morteza-Gerd area of the city. According to sources, the individuals were kidnapped by a six-member group.<\/p>\n<p>Reports indicate that during the captivity, the kidnappers sent videos of the merchants being tortured to their families and demanded a ransom of 600,000 dollars for their release.<\/p>\n<p>It is said that in an initial operation, a man named &#8220;Arash,&#8221; identified as the leader of this group, was arrested. Following his arrest, the location where the hostages were held\u2014a derelict site in the Morteza-Gerd area\u2014was confirmed.<\/p>\n<p>Following a police operation, the two merchants, who had been held inside a well, were pulled out alive and rescued. So far, no further details have been released regarding their health status or the fate of other members of the kidnappers\u2019 group.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tehran police rescue two Afghan merchants held captive for 25 days, arresting the kidnappers and recovering them from a well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7599,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-important-news","category-security-incidents"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7600"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7600\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}