The Iranian-British Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, detained since 2016 in Iran, where she had been convicted of sedition, which she has always denied, is on her way back to the United Kingdom, announced Wednesday March 16 a British MP. “Nazanin is at Tehran airport and on her way home”said on Twitter Tulip Siddiq, Labor MP for the constituency of Hampstead and Kilburn (North London), where Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s husband Richard Ratcliffe lives.
In Tehran, official Iranian media confirmed that the Iranian-Briton had been ” delivery “ to the British government. The latter did not immediately confirm his release, but the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, had earlier in the day expressed hope for a positive outcome, saying that “negotiations continued” and were in their last phase.
Accused of conspiracy
Aged 43, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe had recovered her passport on Tuesday, raising hopes of an early release. Project manager for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the philanthropic branch of the news agency of the same name, she was arrested in 2016 in Tehran, where she came to visit her family. She had been accused of plotting to overthrow the Islamic Republic of Iran, which she vehemently denies, and sentenced to five years in prison.
After serving her sentence, she was again sentenced at the end of April 2021 to one year in prison for participating in a rally outside the Iranian Embassy in London in 2009. By October 2021, she had lost her appeal, causing her relatives to fear an imminent return to prison, from where she had been authorized to leave with an electronic bracelet in March 2020, because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Richard Ratcliffe, her husband and father of their little girl, Gabriella, had gone on a hunger strike for 21 days in the fall of 2021 to warn of her fate.
Negotiate the release of several dual nationals
Boris Johnson had confirmed that a team of British negotiators was working in Tehran to secure the release of several dual nationals. According to British media, including The GuardianAnoosheh Ashoori, a retired engineer arrested in August 2017 while visiting his mother and sentenced to ten years in prison for spying for Israel, has also reportedly been released.
On Wednesday morning, British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss told the BBC that she had made a priority “to ensure that we repay the debt that we rightfully owe to the Iranian authorities”, a debt of 400 million pounds (475 million euros) dating from the time of the Shah of Iran. However, the British authorities have always been careful not to link the two cases.