The fight to bring Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe home
In March 2016 a mother took her one-year-old daughter to meet her grandparents in Tehran, Iran. On their journey back to the UK, Nazanin was apprehended and arrested by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard at Imam Khomeini airport. She was forcibly separated from her infant daughter who was to stay with her grandparents, whilst Nazanin would endure solitary confinement for a total of 8.5 months.
Source- https://www.amnesty.org.uk/nazanin-zaghari-ratcliffe-whats-happening
Who is Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe?
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has dual British and Iranian citizenship. Prior to her arrest, she lived in London with her daughter and husband, Richard Ratcliffe. She worked as a project manager for Thomson Reuters and was previously employed in a junior administrative role by BBC Media Action.
What are the charges against her?
The circumstances surrounding Nazanin’s arrest and subsequent trial are obscure. Amnesty International reports she was denied access to a lawyer and was tried behind closed doors. From a UK perspective, this is a clear violation of her Article 6 right to a fair trial under the Human Rights Act 1998. An Iranian court found Nazanin guilty of plotting against the Iranian government, and she was sentenced to five years in prison in September 2016.
At the time her sentence was handed down, Iranian authorities merely stated she led a ‘foreign-linked hostile network’, and her imprisonment was in the interests of national security. In October 2017, the prosecutor general of Tehran outlined Nazanin was being imprisoned for running a BBC Persian online journalism course aiming to recruit people to spread propaganda against Iran. As Nazanin’s former employer, BBC News Media has described the accusations as preposterous, given that Nazanin took a junior administrative role and thus was highly unlikely to mastermind a media network plotting against the Iranian government.
https://www.coe.int/en/web/pristina/-/online-round-table-the-right-to-fair-trial
How has the British government responded?
More than five years have passed since Nazanin was imprisoned and a series of UK cabinet ministers have tried and failed to bring Nazanin home. Richard Ratcliffe first publicly campaigned for his wife’s freedom in May 2016. Former Prime Minister Theresa May raised concerns about Nazanin in a conversation with the Iranian president. Serving as the foreign secretary at the time, Boris Johnson raised the case with his counterpart in Iran. However, mere words exchanged between the UK and Iranian government have not appeared to make a difference, as Nazanin remains in limbo over whether she will ever regain her status as a free, private citizen. In November 2017, Boris Johnson was heavily criticised for his misleading comment to a parliamentary select committee, where he stated Nazanin was ‘simply teaching journalism.’ This was taken to directly play into the hands of the Iranian government who could cite Johnson’s comments as proof Nazanin engaged in “propaganda against the regime.’ When asked about the government’s efforts to bring Nazanin home in November 2021, Prime Minister Boris Johnson stated his government is ‘doing their best but there are ‘complexities.’
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5054801/Boris-Johnson-gaffe-Nazanin-Zaghari-Ratcliffe.html
Hostage diplomacy
The ‘complexities’ presumably refer to the political machinations at the heart of Nazanin’s case. It is widely suspected that the real motive of the Iranian authorities is to use Nazanin as a bargaining chip, hoping that the UK government will pay a £400 million debt to Iran in exchange for her release. Three other individuals have been detained in Iran since Nazanin was arrested in 2016, their names being Anoosheh Ashoori, Morad Tahbaz, and Mehran Raoof. It is assumed that the UK’s non-payment of this debt is the underlying reason for their detention in Iran. The past five years have seen a number of hostage diplomacy cases, where private citizens have been arbitrarily detained to be used as leverage in the pursuit of foreign policy aims. A notable example was the arrest of Canadian nationals Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor by Chinese authorities. They were presumably arrested in retaliation to the detention of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou on grounds of fraud under the Canada-US extradition treaty. The two Canadian nationals spent 1000 days in captivity as pawns caught up in the dispute between the Chinese and Canadian governments.
Will the British government do what it takes to bring Nazanin home?
Nazanin’s first prison sentence ended in April 2021, however, she was put back on trial a week later and convicted of a new charge imposing a one-year prison sentence. She lost her appeal against her second prison sentence in October 2021. In an interview recorded in November 2021, her husband Richard Ratcliffe argued for bolder and more decisive government action that directly targets individuals responsible for the detention of British nationals. Both Nazanin and Richard have endured hunger strikes to highlight the urgency of their situation. Richard Ratcliffe ended a 21-day hunger strike in November 2021, after protesting outside the Foreign Office demanding that the government make a decisive move to secure the freedom of Britons detained in Iran.
https://www.itv.com/news/2021-11-13/richard-ratcliffe-ends-hunger-strike-over-wifes-iran-detention
Richard Ratcliffe has publicly issued unequivocal demands for the government to take ‘firm steps’ to ‘disincentivise Iran’ from continuing to use British nationals as leverage to ensure the payment of the debt. However, the government has not provided any guarantees that they will pay the debt or come to an alternative arrangement with Iran to secure the release of detained British nationals. The difficult political position that the British government finds itself in maybe starkly contrasted with the simple tragedy of a family divided in order to serve the political ambitions of the authoritarian Iranian regime. It remains to be seen whether the current British government will finally make the difficult decisions needed to bring Nazanin home.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/26/world/europe/nazanin-zaghari-ratcliffe-sentenced-iran-britain.html
