Family’s agony as UK aid worker told to return to Iranian jail

CHARITY worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has voluntarily returned to prison in Iran after an emotional family reunion.

Richard Ratcliffe said his wife’s lawyer had been attempting to get her three-day release from Evin prison on furlough extended yesterday.

The British-Iranian mother was released from the Tehran jail on Thursday and has been staying with family outside the capital. However, after a “day of mixed messages” the request for an extension was not granted and she was told she must return by sunset, her husband said.

Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said he had spoken to Iran’s foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on Friday but that “clearly wasn’t enough”.

Vowing to continue the fight for her release, he tweeted: “Looks like Iranian legal system is impervious to the simple fact at the heart of this: an innocent woman is desperate to be reunited with her family.”

Mr Ratcliffe said the prosecutors office told his wife she would need to return to the prison “for a few days or a week” to wait for a key signature.

She decided to go back voluntarily with her “head held high” rather than be “dragged out of the house in front of her baby”, he said.

Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s fouryear-old daughter, Gabriella, cried when she realised her mother was leaving.

He said: “She [Nazanin] promised Gabriella that the next time she saw her it would be forever, not just for a few days, for proper freedom, not just for furlough. And next time they will go back to London to be with daddy.”

Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe, from Hampstead, north London, was sentenced to five years in jail after being accused of spying by Tehran’s Islamist regime. She denies the allegation and said she was on holiday in Iran to allow her daughter to spend time with relatives there.

Gabriella has been staying with family since Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who works for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, was detained at Imam Khomeini airport in April 2016.

Mr Ratcliffe said his wife was initially told she did not have to return to prison yesterday and that her furlough extension request had been authorised. She was later told the permit had not been signed off and that she must return to prison “for a few days or a week” while this was sorted. Mr Ratcliffe said the British embassy had reported hearing no mention of the charity worker needing to return to prison to wait for a signature from the Iranian authorities.

Earlier, Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe went to the prosecutors office with her daughter where she was warned not to do anything to jeopardise her chances of longerterm release, he added.