Jamshid Sharmahd’s wife watched in fear as the pixellated dot marking his location moved away from Dubai airport and towards the border with Oman.
The Iranian-German journalist and software engineer was supposed to be on a flight from Dubai to India, in late July 2020, for a business meeting, not travelling overland. His wife watched from their home in California as the dot passed a school and a hospital thousands of miles away in the Gulf state of Oman.