The Iranian-British Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, arrested in 2016 in Iran on charges of sedition which she has always denied, was expected in London on Wednesday after being handed over to British authorities, the happy epilogue of a long and painful saga.
An official Iranian media confirmed that this 43-year-old employee of the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the philanthropic arm of the eponymous news agency, had been “handed over” to the British government after four years in prison and two additional years under house arrest.
Another Iranian-British, Anoosheh Ashoori, a retired engineer arrested in August 2017 while visiting his mother and sentenced to 10 years in prison for spying for Israel, has also been released, officials say. Iranian.
“Nazanin is at the airport in Tehran and on her way home,” said Tulip Siddiq, Labor MP for the Hampstead and Kilburn constituency (North London) where the binational’s husband, Richard Ratcliffe, lives. since 2016 has fought tirelessly to secure his release.
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was arrested in April 2016 in Tehran, where she had visited her family with her 22-month-old daughter, and accused of plotting to overthrow the Islamic Republic and then sentenced to five years in prison.
British authorities did not immediately confirm his release but Prime Minister Boris Johnson had earlier in the day expressed hope for a positive outcome, saying “negotiations were continuing” and were in their final phase.
Mr Johnson had confirmed that a team of British negotiators was working in Tehran to secure the release of several dual nationals.
– Pawns” –
“We are incredibly relieved that Nazanin can finally be reunited with her family in the UK after a horrific six-year ordeal. Nazanin has suffered unimaginable suffering,” said Rupert Skilbeck, director of the NGO Redress which was monitoring her case.
“His detention in Iran has always been unlawful and his treatment in Iran amounts to torture,” he added.
Richard Ratcliffe had repeatedly claimed that his wife was the “hostage” of a sinister political game relating to an old debt of 400 million pounds (475 million euros) contracted by the United Kingdom within the framework of an arms contract and dating from the time of the Shah of Iran.
On Wednesday, before Nazanin’s departure was announced, British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss told the BBC that her priority was “to ensure that we repay the debt we rightfully owe to the Iranian authorities”.
She said on Sky News that London was looking for “ways” to settle it while the Iranian regime is under international sanctions.
However, the British authorities have always been careful not to link the two cases.
“Nazanin and Anoosheh should never have been detained in the first place – they were both imprisoned on trumped up national security charges, a common tactic in Iran,” the leader commented for the United Kingdom. United of Amnesty International, Sacha Deshmukh.
They were used “as pawns” by the Iranian authorities who “acted with calculated cruelty, trying to extract maximum diplomatic value from their captivity”, he added.
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe had collected his passport on Tuesday, raising hopes of an early release.
Four years after her arrest, she had obtained temporary leave in March 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic and was placed under house arrest with her parents.
But at the end of her sentence, she was again sentenced at the end of April 2021 to one year in prison for having participated in a rally in front of the Iranian embassy in London in 2009.
In October 2021, she had lost her appeal, making her relatives fear a return to prison.
Richard Ratcliffe, father of their little girl Gabriella, now 7, had gone on two hunger strikes to warn of her fate, the last of which was for 21 days in the fall of 2021.