Cyclist Sofiane Sehili returns to France, after fifty days of detention in Russia

Sofiane Sehili was released on October 23, after being fined for “illegally crossing the border” in the Russian Far East. He arrived in Paris on Sunday, after passing through Thailand.

French cyclist Sofiane Sehili returned to France on Sunday October 27, after fifty days of detention in Russia. He judged Monday, to the AFP, “not very smart” of having illegally crossed the Sino-Russian border to try to break an ultracycling record. “I tried to cross the border legally, which unfortunately wasn't possible that day. It might have been possible the next day, but I wouldn't have had the chance to break the record. So I decided to try to cross the border illegally.”specifies Sofiane Sehili to AFP.

Sofiane Sehili was released on October 23, after being fined for “illegal border crossing” in the Russian Far East. He arrived in Paris on Sunday, after passing through Thailand. After going along the border, he managed to cross to the Russian side, where he drove for several hours in a forest “fairly thick”. Then“I told myself that all this had gone on long enough, that it wasn’t very smart to try to do that anyway”he said again. The athlete left Lisbon at the beginning of July and planned to cross 17 countries to arrive at the beginning of September in Vladivostok, a city located at the eastern end of Russia.

“A little naively, I told myself that (…) if I presented myself to the authorities and tried to make them believe that I had done all this involuntarily, I still had a chance of being sent back to China relatively quickly,” he continued. Gold, “the context in Russia was still quite tense, it didn't work (…) From there, things took their normal course (…) I was treated like any person who would have done what I did.”

He does not complain of mistreatment. “Me, each time I was transferred to a detention center, I had a medical examination, we made sure that everything was fine, each time I was interviewed, everything was noted down, there were reports. It’s not a place where they take you, they throw you in a cell and you don’t know exactly what’s happening.” he estimated.