Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe: British-Iranian rescuer removed her ankle monitor, but faces new court date

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Zaghari-Ratcliffe has been under house arrest for nearly a year due to the coronavirus pandemic. Her five-year sentence was due to end on Sunday.

“I’m still trying to get a grip on what’s going on, but the news has been mixed,” Richard Ratcliffe told CNN. The single tag of the first case has been eliminated, but Nazanin was summoned to court for the second case next week. So the games continue. “

Iran’s semi-official Isna news agency quoted Hojjat Kermani, Nazanin-Zaghari’s lawyer, as saying she would be tried on March 14 on her other charges.

British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said he welcomed the news. “We welcome the removal of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s ankle tag, but Iran’s ongoing treatment is excruciating,” he tweeted on Sunday. “She must be able to return to the UK as soon as possible to be reunited with her family.”

On Sunday, British MP Tulip Siddiq, who has been in contact with Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s family, said Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s maiden voyage after the ankle tag was removed would be to visit her grandmother.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe in the picture with her daughter Gabriella.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a Thomson Reuters Foundation employee, was detained at Tehran Airport in April 2016. She tried to return home to London after visiting family with her daughter Gabriella, who was 22 months old at the time.

The Iranian government accused her of collaborating with organizations that purportedly attempted to overthrow the regime, which she and the Thomson Reuters Foundation consistently denied. She was sentenced to five years in prison.

In September, Iranian state media reported that Zaghari-Ratcliffe and her lawyer before the Branch 15 judge had been subpoenaed on new charges, but did not provide further details. It remains unclear what the new levy or levies may entail.
The British government called the new charges “indefensible and unacceptable”.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe, now 42, was moved from prison to house arrest during the peak of Iran’s coronavirus pandemic. According to the British government, she was under house arrest earlier this year.

She received British diplomatic protection in 2019 and has been designated a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said in parliament earlier this year that the government was “doing everything it could” to secure the release of Zaghari-Ratcliffe from “the wholly unjustified detention in Tehran”.

Iranian state television broadcasts an unseen video of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe
Johnson has been personally involved in the case. In 2017, when he was Secretary of State, he had to apologize after a serious misstep in which he told a parliamentary committee that Zaghari-Ratcliffe had taught journalism during her visit to Iran. He later made it clear that she had visited relatives before she was detained.
The comments seemed to lead to Zaghari-Ratcliffe being called to an unscheduled hearing, where Johnson’s comments were cited as evidence that she was guilty of “ propaganda against the regime. ” A month later, he traveled to Tehran to push for the release of people with dual citizenship held in Iran.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe has held at least three hunger strikes since her arrest, one of them in a desperate attempt to get medical treatment for breast lumps and numbness in her limbs. Last February, her family said they believed she had contracted the coronavirus in Evin prison outside Tehran. In August 2018, Zaghari-Ratcliffe was hospitalized after panic attacks, her husband said. In 2019, her supporters said she was transferred to a psychiatric ward of a Tehran hospital and her father was denied visit.

Lindsay Isaac and Hande Atay Alam contributed to this report.

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