Now he's training for next year's Olympics without a guarantee that he can compete.

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Mollaei was the defending world champion, and Israel's Sagi Muki his biggest rival for the gold medal. There was one problem – Iran has a policy of boycotting all competitions against Israelis, even if that means an athlete's training was all for nothing.

Mollaei told The Associated Press he was ordered to lose a preliminary bout against a Russian in order to cover up the reason for his withdrawal. When he refused and won, he received more intimidating calls from senior officials.

"For once, I decided to live as a free man for myself, and prove to the world that I am a brave man," Mollaei said in a recent interview in Germany, where he's living in an undisclosed location.

"I did this for my human soul. For myself. I wanted to practice and compete with freedom, with peace of mind," said Mollaei, speaking in Persian. "I didn't want to worry about whom to compete with and whom not to compete with. I'll compete with anyone, to honor the Olympic charter."

In the end, Mollaei lost a bronze-medal bout and didn't face Muki, who won gold. The International Judo Federation, which is supporting Mollaei, said he received demands to withdraw from an Iranian deputy sports minister, embassy staff and the head of the Iranian Olympic Committee.

Mollaei's likeliest route to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics is now the International Olympic Committee's team for refugees. The IJF is helping him but said he will need refugee status from the United Nations.

So far, adapting to life in Germany is hard.

"Even the clothes you can see on me [are gifts]. I had nothing when I arrived in Germany. I just decided to come and I came," he said. "I had a lot of gifts from friends and this is how I live now, with the help of a few friends and the IJF. I'm still waiting to see what will happen later, how I can compete, but obviously from the very beginning of my arrival here in Germany I started my training. Where and how I will compete later, I don't know yet."

Mollaei said he has not asked for asylum in Germany. Instead, he is living on a visa issued when he competed in German club events and is cautious about security.

Powerfully built, with broad shoulders, Mollaei speaks softly and chooses his words carefully.

"Even when I want to contact my family I do it through a friend in Tehran because my family is under surveillance and I can't talk about many issues," he said. "I don't have much contact with any of my friends."

Mollaei told the AP that he had been given similar orders to avoid Israeli competitors on three previous occasions. The last time was in February, when he failed to appear for the medal ceremony at a competition in France because it would mean sharing the podium with Muki.

"Almost all Iranian athletes have received such orders when it is linked to Israeli athletes," he said.

Iranian officials have said Mollaei was somehow manipulated into leaving the team, and that he would be welcomed if he returned home.

He is skeptical, pointing to an Iranian letter to the IJF in May pledging to comply with Olympic nondiscrimination rules. At the time, it was hailed as a signal that Iran would end its sports boycott of Israel.

"I can assure you that they didn't comply with the Olympic Charter. So how can we trust them?" Mollaei said of Iran's sports officials.

Mollaei's break with the Iranian authorities comes at a time when activists are using sports to defy government demands.

Female Iranian activists have campaigned for years to be allowed to attend sports stadiums, particularly for men's soccer games, and staged protests at last year's World Cup in Russia. Last week, Iranian news outlets reported 29-year-old soccer fan Sahar Khodayari had died after setting herself on fire upon learning she could spend six months in prison for trying to sneak into a game.

Mollaei expressed sympathy for Khodayari and other female campaigners.

"I wondered why this happened, why Iranian women can't freely live like other girls, and enjoy sports and enjoy watching sports," he said. "I don't know what's going on, and why such difficulties should only happen to Iranians and the Iranian sport community.

"I don't know what to say. I'm just sad and disappointed. I just hope that one day the girls and athletes in my country can live freely and can enjoy life."

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The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the schedule adopted by A Country Place's condominium association was "plainly unequal in its allotment of favorable swimming times."

The Lakewood condominium complex, which serves people 55 or older, restricts swimming by gender at certain times in accordance with Jewish law that prohibits men and women from bathing together. Orthodox Jewish residents make up about two-thirds of residents, but several non-Orthodox homeowners sued in 2016 after being fined $50 each after refusing to abide by the rules.

A judge ruled in January that the separate swim hours weren't discriminatory because they applied to both sexes equally, but the appeals court overturned that decision Monday.

Under the rules, men and women were only allowed in the pool together for two hours on weekdays and all day Saturday, when, the court noted, "Orthodox residents would not go swimming on the Jewish Sabbath."

The association said it allocated roughly the same number of hours for men and women, but the court said women were only able to swim for about 3.5 hours on weeknight evenings compared to 16.5 hours for men.

"Women with regular-hour jobs thus have little access to the pool during the work week, and the schedule appears to reflect particular assumptions about the roles of men and women," Judge Thomas Ambro wrote for the court majority.

An attorney for the plaintiffs, Jose Roman, told the Asbury Park Press that his clients were "very happy that the court saw the case our way, that it was discriminatory based on gender."

An attorney for the condominium association didn't immediately return an email seeking comment.

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The probe will examine "whether personal data of Israeli citizens was illegally used in a way that infringes upon their right to privacy and the provisions of the Israeli Privacy Law," the ministry said in a statement.

Facebook came under further pressure from lawmakers, investors, advertisers and users after founder Mark Zuckerberg admitted the social media network made mistakes in letting 50 million users' data get into the hands of political consultancy Cambridge Analytica.

Zuckerberg apologized on Wednesday for mistakes his company made and promised to restrict developers' access to user information as part of a plan to protect privacy.

On Thursday, Facebook executives were still saying sorry.

"We know this is an issue of trust. We know this is a critical moment for our company, for the service we provide," Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg said in an interview broadcast on CNBC.

The company has lost more than $50 billion in market value since allegations that Cambridge Analytica improperly accessed data to build profiles on American voters and influence the 2016 presidential election surfaced earlier this week.

The Israeli Justice Ministry said that under the law, personal data may only be used for the purpose for which it was given, with the consent of the individual.

"Once concerns were raised that many Israeli users were affected by this breach we decided to take action," attorney Alon Bachar, head of the Privacy Protection Authority at the Justice Ministry, explained.

He said the suspected breach was "very serious," adding that the PPA has demanded Facebook provide it with answers and relevant documentation within one month.

Zionist Union MK Revital Swid, who heads the Knesset Lobby for Virtual Space and Social Networks, said the investigation was akin to "putting a finger in the dam. The right to privacy has long been lost."

Facebook and other social media giants "are operating in a no-holds-barred area, gathering information about users, storing it and selling it to the highest bidder. While every other database owner must comply with the provisions of the law and adhere to rigid technological standards to safeguard this information, Facebook and its kind avoid this by claiming they are not based in Israel.

"We must anchor as a basic right the right of every individual to have their personal information safeguarded, and ensure that anyone who mines personal information, including social media giants, is not only subject to Israeli law but is also subject to restrictions with regard to giving it to a third party. I have approached Attorney General Avichai Mendelblit with a demand that the provisions of the Protection of Privacy Law be imposed on social media giants," Swid said.

Zionist Union MK Mickey Rosenthal also welcomed the Israeli investigation against Facebook.

"The time has come for Israel to wake up and take responsibility for the threat posed by Facebook, Google and the other information superpowers. It is not too late to restrain these information monsters," he said.

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