Two Iranian footballers who fled to Australia after refusing to sing their nation’s anthem have opened up about the new lives they are building far from home.

Atefeh Ramezanisadeh and Fatemeh Pasandideh, known as Ati and Pasand, were recently granted Australian citizenship during a private ceremony attended by Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke.

The pair were members of the Iranian women’s soccer team that staged a quiet act of defiance against the country’s authoritarian leadership, standing silently during the national anthem before a match against South Korea at Gold Coast Stadium on March 2.

Their protest came amid a brutal crackdown in Iran, where authorities have been accused of killing tens of thousands of demonstrators, and as tensions escalated involving the United States and Israel.

In the aftermath, seven players initially sought asylum in Australia after an Iranian public broadcaster branded them “wartime traitors”.

But continued pressure from Iran saw all but Ati and Pasand return to the Middle East.

The women on Sunday told 60 Minutes they haven’t contacted the team, or family members in Iran, for fear of reprisal.

‘For security reasons over these past 6 months, we decided not to talk because I don’t want to put their lives in danger,’ Pasand said.

Pasand has also lost contact with her father and brothers, who remain in Iran.

‘Since I made this decision, I have never been in contact with them but I’ve heard that they are okay,’ she said.

‘I try to get updates through people around them but I hope change happens in Iran so I can see them again.’

When pressed on whether she believed turmoil would end in Iran, Pasand said: ‘The only thing I believe is that brutality will never last forever.’

Just six months on from the devastating decision, the women are working to create new lives in Australia.

Pasand shared she watches popular children’s cartoon Bluey to learn Australian slang while Ati recently earned her Australian driver’s licence.

Both women play for Brisbane-based soccer club Wynnum Wolves but hope to return to professional teams.

It was through the team that they met their ‘second father’, club president Rabieh Krayem.

Mr Krayem had to pause his interview and wipe his tears when the 60 Minutes team told him that Ati referred to him as a father figure.

‘I’m crying now. You know, I can understand missing her father and to be compared to someone’s father – that’s a lot to take on,’ he said.

‘If I can make her life a little bit easier, make both their lives easier, that’s all I need.’

Burke on Sunday shared how difficult it was to reach out to the Iranian team following their protest.

Despite being on Australian soil, the women were kept under close guard by Iranian minders at all hours.

It was only six days after the women refused to sing the anthem that Australian authorities were able to contact them on March 8, immediately after their final match against the Philippines. 

‘There were the tiniest interactions with some of our officials where we just said, ‘If you want to seek protection from Australia, we’re open to have that conversation with you’, and the seed was planted,’ Burke said.

Immigration officials were able to further help the women through a secret midnight meeting in the foyer of their Gold Coast hotel. 

‘We were under so much stress. We didn’t know if we were doing the right thing. We were terrified and anxious – it was a mix of feelings,’ Ati said.

‘And the night we made the decision, none of us slept until 5am.’

Now they have citizenship, the women finally feel ‘safe’.

‘It meant everything. Getting citizenship allow us to breathe and focus on our future,’ Ati said.

‘It gave us a feeling of safety. It was a really wonderful thing to happen.’

Pasand added: ‘I am so deeply grateful to be here. It feels like my home here. Iran remains in my heart but I truly love Australia.

‘I want to be a useful person for Australia and be the best version of myself.’

A global software firm has taken a former sales executive to court, accusing him of downloading thousands of sensitive company documents before he was dismissed and later moving to a competitor embroiled in a high-value fight for Australian Taxation Office-related work.

Cyara Solutions, an AI-driven customer experience platform, has filed proceedings against its former ANZ sales manager Stephen Mitchell and rival Hypertech Solutions. The company claims Hypertech gained an advantage through the alleged misuse of confidential material in a dispute over work Cyara says is worth about $3.5million.

According to a statement of claim lodged in June 2024, Cyara — founded in Melbourne and now headquartered in Texas — alleges Mr Mitchell violated his employment contract, a separate confidentiality agreement and his equitable obligation not to misuse confidential information.

Cyara also claims Mr Mitchell breached the Corporations Act by allegedly using information obtained during his employment with the company to benefit Hypertech.

In its case against Hypertech, Cyara alleges the rival company either assisted in or benefited from Mr Mitchell’s alleged breaches. Hypertech has denied the allegations.

A factual background outlined in a Supreme Court judgment from August 24 states that Mr Mitchell joined Cyara in 2017 as a Major Account Executive, before being promoted to ANZ Sales Manager.

Throughout his tenure, Mr Mitchell predominantly managed Cyara’s relationship with Optus, which subcontracted Cyara to provide services to the ATO.

In August 2022, Optus began communicating with Hypertech about new software for contact centres, the judgment states. 

The following February, Optus’ account manager emailed Mr Mitchell to say that the ATO was ‘aggressively seeking price reductions’ and wanted to see improved functionality from the software. Cyara’s pleadings characterise the correspondence as a notification of an open tender process.

Following negotiations, Cyara was able to renew its contract with Optus for another three years from July 2023.

On July 3, Mr Mitchell signed an additional confidentiality and intellectual property agreement with Cyara.

According to Cyara, Mr Mitchell learned in November or December that he was not in the running for the newly created ‘Vice President of International Sales’ role and would also not be attending the annual ‘sales kickoff event’ in the US.

Mr Mitchell disputes this version of events and asserts that he had no interest in the role and only learned of his non-attendance at the event when he received an email in January about his accommodation being cancelled.

While discussions were continuing between Optus and Hypertech, Mr Mitchell remained focused on securing the ATO tender, emailing his colleague on December 8 that he was making good progress.

According to Cyara’s pleadings, it was also around December 8 when Mr Mitchell downloaded approximately 11,000 work files to his personal drive, without authorisation or a work-related purpose. 

According to Cyara, more than 3,500 of these files contained confidential information, including pricing strategies, product roadmaps and contract terms.

In his defence, Mr Mitchell argues he saved copies to his work laptop and an external drive for the purpose of remote work, with no relation to any concerns he had about his ongoing employment.

On December 12, Optus emailed Mr Mitchell inviting Cyara to formally submit its cost proposal for the ATO testing contract, while also flagging concerns about the software’s declining use and integration issues.

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On Christmas Eve, Mr Mitchell received a call from Cyara’s chief executive, Mr Alok Kulkarni, which prompted fears that his employment was hanging in the balance.

After hanging up, Mr Mitchell fired off a string of text messages, urging the CEO to give him one more quarter at the company, stating he had ‘worked too hard’ in securing deals not to be paid for them.

An excerpt of messages included in the judgment shows Mr Mitchell texting Mr Kulkarni: ‘Worst phone call of my life and especially on the doorstep of Xmas.’

On Christmas Day, Mr Mitchell is alleged by Cyara to have downloaded eight additional files to his personal drive, which he then transferred onto a flash drive the next day.

On January 9, Mr Mitchell was terminated and a Deed of Settlement was executed, stipulating his compliance with a range of obligations including confidentiality and intellectual property.

Later that month, Cyara’s chief executive, Mr Kulkarni, responded to Mr Mitchell’s previous texts from Christmas Eve, telling him he had just returned from India and wanted to catch up.

In response, Mr Mitchell fired back: ‘Alok, you’re the CEO. If you wanted me there I’d still be there. I’m trying hard to lose the anger I feel, especially after our Xmas [was] ruined by your Xmas Eve phone call.

‘You were just distancing yourself from what was coming. I am so disappointed in you and also the new management team at Cyara who don’t even know me.’

Mr Mitchell then went on to say he had tripled the size of Cyara’s business and cash balance over two years and had missed out on both his long service leave entitlements and equity, and said he had ‘never felt more insulted’ in his life. 

‘But I’m just as angry at myself for believing anyone senior at Cyara, anyone I’ve known for years, would have a shred of the loyalty I’ve brought to every single one of the people I’ve supported there.’

Mr Kulkarni responded expressing sympathy and acknowledged his job loss as ‘unexpected’ while offering to be a reference.

In his defence, Mr Mitchell stated that in February, he applied for an ABN to conduct ad hoc consulting work, following a month of unsuccessful job hunting post-termination.

He approached a number of industry contacts, including Hypertech’s chief executive, to explore any work opportunities.

An in-principle agreement was reached, and Mr Mitchell began consulting for Hypertech on February 22.

By that stage, however, Hypertech had already been in discussions with Optus about its PumpCX software and opportunities with the ATO. The company had signed a Master Supply Agreement with Optus in December 2023 while Mr Mitchell was still employed by Cyara, with Optus formally executing the deal in February. 

A day after Mr Mitchell started consulting, Optus advised Hypertech it wanted to proceed with a trial of PumpCX, a contact-centre testing platform being evaluated as a potential replacement for Cyara’s technology at the ATO. 

In March, Optus notified Cyara that the ATO intended to end its supply contract, before informing the company in May that the ATO would cease using Cyara’s products and transition to those supplied by Hypertech from July 1, 2024. 

In June, Cyara then launched the current proceedings against both Mr Mitchell and Hypertech.

Earlier this month, in Victoria’s Supreme Court, Hypertech was successful in striking out Cyara’s claims against it for vagueness.

However, Hypertech’s bid to have the whole case thrown out was unsuccessful, with Cyara granted leave to file its claim again.

Greg Carafello was getting ready to join a work call from his office on the 18th floor of the World Trade Center when the building suddenly jolted around him.

The time was 8:46 a.m. on September 11, 2001 — the moment American Airlines Flight 11 struck the 110-story North Tower, sending shockwaves through the complex.

On most mornings, Carafello would not have arrived until about 9:30 a.m., but that day’s routine had changed after he took his son to school earlier than usual.

With the scale of the devastation still unclear and danger unfolding nearby, his employee Joe urged him to evacuate, despite the South Tower appearing to have escaped damage.

“Nobody knew a second plane was going to come in,” Carafello, now 66, told the Daily Mail.

The businessman grabbed his coffee, his Palm Pilot and a few personal belongings – leaving behind his checkbook and briefcase. 

He headed toward the claustrophobic stairwell, which was only 2.5 feet wide. Down they went, believing they would only be gone for a few minutes.

In fact, it took them 16 minutes just to get outside.

Initially they had stopped on the first concourse, where people usually bought lunch.

‘It looked like Lebanon in ’83,’ Carafello said, referring to the suicide bombing at the US Embassy in Beirut 18 years before.

‘It was just destroyed,’ Carafello said of the North Tower, where his friend Jimmy Martello died on the 110th floor. ‘And that wasn’t the second plane, that was only the first plane.’

After seeing the damage, and ‘just wanting to get the heck out of there’ they went to the level below in an attempt to catch a train out of the city.

The level known for its packed shops was in ruins.

‘There’s no canopy, there’s nothing to stop anything from falling a quarter mile,’ Carafello said. Unlike most skyscrapers, the Twin Towers had been built with no core, leaving a wide open space that contributed to their collapse.

Left with no choice, the pair headed back up to the main concourse and sprinted across the street.

‘Some people were just walking, taking pictures, and debris was falling all over,’ the father of four said. ‘I thought they were nuts, to tell you the truth.’

Still unaware of the horrors to come, he told Joe to ring their Jersey offices and explain that they would be back in 20 minutes.

That call, just two minutes before United Airlines Flight 175 struck the tower they had been in moments earlier, was the only reason his wife, Christine, knew he was alive.

As Joe called the other offices, Carafello, who had his back to the South Tower, watched him fall to his knees.

‘I’m like: “What the hell? What are you doing?”‘

Flying just behind Carafello’s head was the second plane. Joe watched it as it slammed into the South Tower, crashing through floors 77 through 85.

At this stage everyone took off, dashing for safety as dust and debris rained down on them.

‘You knew it wasn’t an accident. It wasn’t a small plane. It wasn’t any of the stuff that in your mind,’ he said.

‘So, at that point, everybody runs.’

He and Joe took off toward South Seaport, before heading uptown. At Alphabet City they found a police officer, who they asked how to get off the island. They were told Manhattan had been sealed.

They ended up walking to the Waldorf Astoria hotel in Midtown, roughly an hour and a half from where the World Trade Center.

‘We begged them to give us a room,’ Carafello recalled. They had already been turned away from two other hotels, despite his premium memberships.

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‘By this point, we were dirty and sweaty and shaky. We’re out of juice,’ he said.

They bought new clothes at the gift shop at Bull and Bear Steakhouse Bar. They went upstairs to shower before returning to the restaurant, where they watched the TV footage of the attack with the rest of the customers.

‘That’s when we started to realize the depth of what had happened,’ Carafello said.

Carafello and Joe still had to make it back home to Jersey, where Christine had been in church with friends, praying for his safe return.

He learned there was a boat that would take him to Jersey at 7.30pm.

Along the route, Carafello saw the remnants of the Twin Towers. Smoke was still rising from the ground after the buildings’ collapse. First responders were still pouring over the rubble looking for survivors.

When Carafello looked at the ruins of his old office building, he simply felt numb.

‘It had been such a stressful day that you were kind of out of emotions.’

At that moment he was left wondering just how many people had died, how many were still trapped, and what would come of Manhattan afterwards.

A total of 2,977 people were murdered by the al-Qaeda terrorists who hijacked jets across the US that day. At least 3,000 people have died from 9/11-related cancers and other conditions, according to the WTC Health Program.

It was almost midnight by the time Carafello made it safely back to his wife and four children, who were aged four to 14 years old at the time.

Save for a brief visit to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which was helping his 30 employees in the immediate aftermath, Carafello would not step foot back in Manhattan for six years.

‘You could feel it, the minute you got off the ferry, you could feel your whole body jazz up again, because of the memory,’ Carafello said.

It wasn’t until 2007 that Carafello would change his mind. His son convinced him to buy his friend’s business and get back into the Manhattan market.

‘I wasn’t going to buy, because I was kind of done with New York,’ Carafello told the Daily Mail. ‘[But] he was right. So I bought the business and went back.’

On the 10-year anniversary in 2011, the 9/11 Memorial opened with two reflecting pools where the Twin Towers once stood.

Carafello began volunteering at the 9/11 Museum, educating visitors about the artifacts on display there. He watched as the new World Trade Center was built.

In April 2015, he took the extraordinary step of signing for a lease on the 85th floor of the newly constructed Freedom Tower.

Though he struggled with visiting the office at first, Carafello credits his volunteer hours with helping him.

‘You just kept going until you felt better,’ he told the Daily Mail. ‘When you’re up there, and you’re in a meeting, and you see a helicopter below you… It never bothered me before, and doesn’t bother me today at all.’

‘It’s very cathartic,’ he told the Daily Mail. ‘I’m proud of returning.’

Out of the 400 businesses inside the old World Trade Centers, Carafello’s is believed to be the only one to have made a return

‘When they first opened [the museum and new buildings], I didn’t know if … I wanted to be more involved. But it’s one of the best things I’ve done in life.

‘I still do it. I’ll do it till I’m 100.’

He believes he’s impacted thousands of lives through his volunteer work. On a single Friday, he speaks to 300 to 400 people.

‘They didn’t know the amount of fuel in the plane. They didn’t know the speed of the plane. I mean, you start hearing 540 miles an hour and 440 miles an hour and it brings to light the explosive power these things had.’

Carafello plans to mark the upcoming anniversary of the attacks by honoring the fallen at the museum. He says he will arrive for his volunteering shift at 5.30am.

‘It’s 25 years later, but it happened,’ he said. ‘It’s not a movie.’

‘This was not an accident… This was a murder scene.’