Tech

Jeff Bezos flew on his personal jet to take home the Washington Post reporter detained by Iran

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Jeff Bezos
Jeff Bezos.  Photo by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images

Jeff Bezos flew to Germany on his personal jet and then flew Jason Rezaian, a Washington Post reporter who was detained by Iran for 18 months, to the US, according to media reports.

Bezos, the CEO of Amazon, is also the owner of The Washington Post, which he purchased in 2013.

According to CNN, Bezos had dinner with the Rezaian family on Thursday evening in Germany and then flew Rezaian and his family back to the US on his private jet.

Rezaian is one of several Americans in prison in Iran who were freed last weekend, in a historic prisoner exchange between Iran and the US.

Rezaian, who was The Post's Tehran bureau chief, had been imprisoned in July 2014 on espionage charges, which he denied. After his release a few days ago, he flew to an American military hospital in Germany.

The Washington Post tweeted a picture of the pair in the jet on Friday.

Bezos has not yet publicly talked about about his role escorting Rezaian home on his jet, but tweeted about The Post's efforts to free Rezaian.

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Alexei Oreskovic is the Tech Features Editor for the Business section of Insider.  Based in San Francisco, Oreskovic has covered technology and business for more than 20 years at publications including TheStreet.com, the Industry Standard, and CNET. Before BI, he was a correspondent at Reuters for six years, where he was a finalist for the 2013 Gerald Loeb Award in the Breaking News category for coverage of the Facebook IPO.  As Insider's Tech Features Editor, Oreskovic has overseen groundbreaking investigative stories on Uber, Snapchat, Tesla, Facebook and Google. He was the editor on the Snapchat and Facebook stories that won the Sabew 2018 Larry Birger Young Business Journalist award for former BI reporter Alex Heath. Oreskovic has covered the booms and busts of the tech industry since the first dotcom bubble of the late 1990s, and has interviewed the industry's most important players including Mark Zuckerberg, Eric Schmidt, Sheryl Sandberg and Marissa Mayer. He has made frequent guest appearances on TV and radio, including CNBC and BBC World News.  Disclosure: Oreskovic has a direct family member who owns shares in Compass.