Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is FREE: British charity worker who was jailed for five years in Iran on ‘spying charges’ heads to airport in Tehran to return home to Britain after being handed back her passport
Detained British-Iranian mother Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has been freed after nearly six years and is returning to Britain, it was confirmed today as Tehran and London continued talks about a long-standing £400million debt.
The 44-year-old charity worker travelled to Tehran Airport today to come home to her family in North West London along with another detained British-Iranian, Anousheh Ashouri, according to their lawyer Hojjat Kermani.
Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s family’s local Labour MP Tulip Siddiq said: ‘Nazanin is at the airport in Tehran and on her way home. I came into politics to make a difference, and right now I’m feeling like I have. More details to follow.’
Mr Kermani said: ‘Both of them are on their way to the airport in Tehran to leave Iran.’ Iran’s judiciary officials were not available to comment. Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe has had her British passport returned over the weekend.
Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a project manager with the Thomson Reuters Foundation, was arrested at a Tehran airport in April 2016 and later convicted by an Iranian court of plotting to overthrow the clerical establishment.
Detained British-Iranian mother Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has been freed after nearly six years and is returning to Britain
British mother Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe with her husband Richard Ratcliffe and their daughter Gabriella
Richard Ratcliffe outside the Iranian Embassy in London in 2019 where he was on hunger strike in solidarity with his wife
Her family – including husband Richard, who has led a campaign to free her for years – and the foundation deny the charge. She has been held under house arrest and unable to leave the country since her release from prison.
Mr Ashouri was sentenced to ten years in jail in 2019 for spying for Israel’s Mossad and two years for ‘acquiring illegitimate wealth’, according to Iran’s judiciary.
What is the timeline of events in the Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe case?
April 2016: Arrested by the Revolutionary Guard in Tehran Airport after visiting her parents in Iran with her young daughter Gabriella.
She was taken to prison and held in solitary confinement for 45 days before being moved to a women’s wing.
The mother-of-one was not given access to legal counsel or medical treatment, and the lights in her cell remained permanently switched on.
As a result, Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe experienced problems walking, weight loss, and hair loss.
September 2016: She was sentenced to five years in prison for spying following a trial campaigners have branded ‘secret and unfair’.
April 2017: Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe lost her appeal to overturn her sentence.
November 2017: She is hit with fresh charges of spreading propaganda just days after Boris Johnson told British MPs she has been training journalists in Iran.
August 2018: She is temporarily released so she can spend time with her young daughter Gabriella, but is quickly sent back to prison where she suffers a panic attack.
March 2020: Released on house arrest after Covid-19 started sweeping through Iran.
March 2021: Released from house arrest at the end of her sentence but banned from leaving the country.
April 2021: She is sentenced to a new term in jail on charges of propaganda against Iran’s ruling system, charges she denies.
March 2022: Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe is given back her passport and is freed before being taken to Tehran Airport to return to London.
The Foreign Office has not commented on the reports of her release, and Boris Johnson had said negotiations about Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe were ‘moving forward’ but ‘going right up to the wire’.
The Prime Minister had confirmed earlier today during a visit to the Middle East that a negotiating team has been at work in Tehran to free Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who holds dual UK-Iranian citizenship.
Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe was arrested in April 2016 as she prepared to fly back to the UK, having taken her daughter Gabriella – then not even two years old – to see relatives.
She was accused of plotting to overthrow the Iranian government and sentenced to five years in jail, spending four years in Tehran’s Evin Prison and one under house arrest.
Both the British Government and Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe have always denied the allegations.
While details of the negotiations remain unclear, it is possible they are linked to a £400million debt dating back to the 1970s owned to Iran by the UK.
The Government accepts it should pay the ‘legitimate debt’ for an order of 1,500 Chieftain tanks that was not fulfilled after the shah was deposed and replace by a revolutionary regime.
Foreign Secretary Liz Truss told Sky News today that it is a ‘priority to pay the debt that we owe to Iran’.
Tehran remains under strict sanctions, however, which have been linked to the failure to clear the debt.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson inspects the Guard of Honour as he arrives at Abu Dhabi airport for his visit to the UAE today
The Shah of Iran paid Britain £650million for 1,750 Chieftain tanks (file photo above) in the 1970s but only 185 had been delivered when he was toppled in 1979 and the new government cancelled the order
Fellow British-Iranian prisoner Anoosheh Ashoori (pictured with his wife Sherry Izadi) has also now been released
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