Theresa May has increased the pressure on Iran to release a jailed charity worker during talks in New York.
Theresa May told Iranian president Hassan Rouhani she had “serious concerns” about the jailing of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe. The British-Iranian mother was sentenced to five years in jail after being accused of spying by Tehran’s Islamist regime, a charge she vehemently denies.
In talks on the fringes of the United Nations general assembly, May called for Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s release. It came after foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt demanded rapid action to secure her freedom in his first face-to-face meeting with Iran’s foreign minister.
ProfileWho is Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe?
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Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is an Iranian-British dual national who has been jailed in Iran since April 2016. She has been accused of attempting to orchestrate a “soft overthrow” of the Islamic Republic. She and her three-year-old daughter, Gabriella, were about to return to the UK from Iran after a family visit when she was arrested. Since then, she has spent most of her time in Evin prison in Tehran, separated from her daughter.
In January 2019 she went on hunger strike for three days in protest against being denied medical care in Tehran’s Evin prison. In March, the UK Foreign Office granted her diplomatic protection, a step that raised her case from a consular matter to the level of a dispute between the two states.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe worked for BBC Media Action between February 2009 and October 2010 before moving to Thomson Reuters Foundation, the news agency’s charitable arm, as a project manager. Her family has always said that she was in Iran on holiday.
Hunt told Javad Zarif that Zaghari-Ratcliffe must be returned home quickly. In a statement during talks in New York, he said: “I again pressed for Nazanin’s swift release. She deserves to be back at home with her family.” It was “absolutely essential” the Iranian government took steps to ensure the release of “a number of detained dual nationals”, he added.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who works for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, was detained at Imam Khomeini airport in April 2016. Last month she was granted a three-day release from Evin prison but her request for an extension was denied and she was forced to say goodbye to her four-year-old daughter, Gabriella, and return to jail.
Husband Richard Ratcliffe wrote an open letter to Zarif calling the short release a “cruel game”.
May also used her meeting with Rouhani to underline the UK’s commitment to the Iran nuclear deal. Britain and its European allies responded with dismay to Donald Trump’s decision to pull out of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that relieved sanctions on Tehran in return for an end to Iran’s military nuclear ambitions.