Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, freed after almost six years of detention and house arrest, on an airplane leaving Iran, March 16, 2022

UPDATE, MARCH 20:

Iranian-Australian Shokrollah Jebeli, 83 has died in a Tehran prison, according to his family.

Amnesty called last week for Jebeli’s release, citing his poor health and lack of access to adequate specialised care.

Jebeli was imprisoned in January 2020 over a financial dispute with a person who claimed to work for Iran’s Intelligence Ministry.


UPDATE, MARCH 19:

Anglo-US-Iranian environmentalist Mohard Tahbaz has been returned to prison in Iran after a brief furlough.

Tahbaz was released on Wednesday. However, he was not allowed to join fellow Anglo-Iranian political prisoners Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anousheh Ashouri as they left the country after lengthy sentences.

A spokesman for the UK Foreign Office said it had been informed by Iranian officials that Tahbaz was taken back to Tehran’s Evin Prison for an ankle bracelet. The Iranians said the environmentalist, seized with eight colleagues in January 2018, would be allowed to leave in the forthcoming hours.

One of the environmentalists died in Evin, in suspicious circumstances soon after the arrests. The other eight were given lengthy sentences, with Tahbaz condemned to 10 years for “assembly and collusion against Iran’s national security”.

Tahbaz’s sister said, before the statement from the UK Foreign Office:

There are so many political things going on in the world that his case might just be swept under the rug.

We are hoping that the American authorities will react. We are hoping that British authorities will also come forward and help out because he is a British subject too, or are they only listening to the Iranians who say that he is an American?

She said her brother is suffering from cancer and has contracted COVID-19 twice.


UPDATE 1522 GMT:

UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss has acknowledged that the UK finally paid Iran a £400 million debt over the Shah’s purchase of British Chieftain tanks in the 1970s.

She emphasized that the money is “ring-fenced solely for the purchase of humanitarian goods”, indicating that this ensured “full compliance with UK and international sanctions and all legal obligations”.

Truss did not explain why this approach, to deal with US sanctions on Iran, could not have been completed years earlier.


UPDATE 1515 GMT:

A fourth Anglo-Iranian political prisoner, labor activist Mohsen Raoof, is still behind bars in Tehran.

Raoof was seized by Revolutionary Guards personnel in October 2020. He was then held in prolonged solitary confinement.


UPDATE 1500 GMT:

A third Anglo-Iranian political prisoner, environmental Mohrad Tahbaz, is still in Iran.

Tahbaz, who also has US nationality, was released on prison furlough today.

The co-founder of the Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation, he was among a group of nine environmentalist seized in January 2019.

One of the nine, Professor Keyvan Seyed-Emami, was found dead in his cell in Tehran’s Evin Prison weeks later. Iranian authorities claim he committed suicide, an assertion disputed by Seyed-Emami’s family.

The other eight environmentalists were given long prison sentences, with Tahbaz condemned to 10 yers.

See also Tehran Upholds Long Sentences for 8 Environmentalists

Tahbaz’s sister spoke on BBC radio about the blow to her family:

We are devastated. We are extraordinarily surprised that the only British born among the hostages has been left behind.

What more can I say? We are absolutely and utterly devastated.


UPDATE 1455 GMT:

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratclifee and Anousheh Ashouri, freed from Iran, are in the air and will land in London about 10:30 p.m. local time.


UPDATE, 1025 GMT:

Anglo-Iranian political prisoners Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anousheh Ashouri have been freed from detention and house arrest and are leaving Iran.

Lawyer Hojjat Kermani told Reuters that his clients are en route to a Tehran airport.

Charity worker Zaghari-Ratcliffe has been in prison or under house arrest since April 2016. Businessman Ashouri was seized and detained in August 2017.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s MP Tulip Siddiq, a leading campaigner for her release, responded on Twitter:


UPDATE, MARCH 16:

UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss says London is considering how to pay a £400 million ($522 million) debt to Tehran, a step likely to ensure Iran’s release of Anglo-Iranian political prisoner Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe.

Truss would not say if Zaghari-Ratcliffe could return to London soon, rejoining her husband Richard and daughter Gabriella after almost six years. Instead, the Foreign Secretary said both the case and repayment of the Iranian debt are priorities, with a British team in Iran.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s MP Tulip Siddiq tweeted before a round of TV interviews this morning:


UPDATE, MARCH 15:

Anglo-Iranian charity worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has finally been given her passport by Iranian authorities, raising hopes of her release from the country after almost six years of prison and house arrest.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s MP Tulip Siddiq broke the news via Twitter:

According to her husband Richard, Zaghari-Ratcliffe is still being prevented from returning home as Iran seeks payment of an outstanding $458 million debt from the UK.

The money was paid by the Shah of Iran in the 1970s, soon before he was toppled by the Islamic Revolution, for Chieftain tanks.

According to Iranian officials, the UK has said it cannot make the repayment because of US-led sanctions against Tehran.


UPDATE, OCT 25:

Richard Ratcliffe, the husband of Anglo-Iranian political prisoner Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, has begun a hunger strike.

Ratcliffe announced the strike on Sunday. He said he wants UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss to do more to ensure Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who is under house arrest in Tehran, can leave Iran.

Last week, an Iranian court upheld a one-year extension of Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s prison sentence, imposed when her original five-year term expired in April. No evidence has ever been produced to support the Iranian regime’s claims of espionage against the charity worker.

Ratcliffe is challenging the Foreign Office’s refusal to return £400 million ($551 million) to Iran, a 1970s payment by the Shah for Chieftain tanks which were never delivered.

The Foreign Office maintains that US sanctions prevent payment. It has not revealed what efforts it has made to transfer the money, or to obtain the release of Zaghari-Ratcliffe and fellow Anglo-Iranian political prisoners Morad Tahbaz and Anoush Ashoori and UK permanent resident Aras Amiri.

Ratcliffe told The Guardian:

Just prior to the news [of the extension of Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s sentence], we had a very bleak meeting with the Foreign Office, ending with me telling them I had no confidence in their strategy and their reluctance to act: they still do not settle the debt to Iran whose impasse in 2016 caused Nazanin to be taken. There is no legal impediment now, the minister said.

But also they do nothing to disincentivize Iran’s hostage-taking, still refuse to use the word “hostage” despite promises to Nazanin. They still seem surprised each time Iran escalates – but it still happens cost-free. They still say the same slogans. At some point, soundbites don’t protect you.

Ratcliffe also went on hunger strike for 15 days in 2019, outside the Iranian Embassy in London, to highlight his wife’s case. After the strike, Iranian authorities. finally allowed the couple’s daughter, six-year-old Gabriella, to leave Iran.

He reflected on Sunday:

It can be difficult to capture the feeling of a life wasting away, watching prison creep closer while we sit in the PM’s in-tray. Nazanin was increasingly distraught last week….

In truth, I never expected to have to do a hunger strike twice. It is not a normal act. It seems extraordinary the need to adopt the same tactics to persuade government here, to cut through the accountability gap.


ORIGINAL ENTRY, OCT 17: Anglo-Iranian political prisoner Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has lost an appeal against the extension of her sentence in Iran.

The charity worker, who is under house arrest and forbidden to leave Iran, was told on Saturday that her one-year term for “spreading propaganda” has been upheld.

In April 2016, Zaghari-Ratcliffe was seized as she and her infant daughter were leaving Iran after visiting relatives. She was sentenced, without public presentation of evidence, to five years in prison for espionage.

Following news of the extension, her husband Richard Ratcliffe accused the UK Government of failing to deal with problems “until they become crises”.

He said he warned the Foreign Office at a Friday meeting on Friday about the appeal: “The longer we wait, the more chance of bad news. I didn’t expect the next day to get bad news, but we did.”

Ratcliffe, who is caring for the couple’s six-year-old daughter Gabrielle, said that Zaghari-Ratcliffe is “traumatised at the thought of having to go back to jail”.

Technically, she’s now just waiting for the phone call, saying, ‘Turn up at this prison on this day’. There’s a sword hanging over us now, it will at some point fall. It’s clearly a signal that the ball’s in the government’s court to do something.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s MP Tulip Siddiq also urged the Johnson Government to respond.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe was released on electronic tag in March 2020, amid the first wave of Iran’s Coronavirus pandemic. However, Iranian authorities threatened last September to detain her beyond her five-year sentence with new charges. The UK Foreign Office told Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s lawyers that it has no obligation to assist her.

In April, upon the expiry of her original sentence, an Iranian court imposed the additional one-year term.

UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss issued a statement on Saturday:

[This is an] appalling continuation of the cruel ordeal she is going through. Instead of threatening to return Nazanin to prison, Iran must release her permanently so she can return home to her young daughter and family. We are doing all we can to help Nazanin get home…and I will continue to press Iran.