UK-Iranian Zaghari-Ratcliffe briefly freed from Tehran jail
LONDON: Nazanin Zaghari Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian woman who has been in prison in Tehran for more than two years on sedition charges, has been released for three days, her husband said.
“Nazanin was released from Evin prison on furlough this morning. Initially the release is for three days – her lawyer is hopeful this can be extended,” Richard Ratcliffe said in a statement.
Ratcliffe said his wife was currently with her parents and their four-year-old daughter Gabriella in Damavand, a resort near Tehran.
“This was a very happy surprise after a number of false dawns recently, which had been increasingly unsettling. Our thanks to all those involved in making this possible in Tehran and London, and to the new Foreign Secretary (Jeremy Hunt) for all his recent efforts and considerations,” he said.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who works for the Thomson Reuters Foundation – the media organisation’s philanthropic arm – was arrested at Tehran airport in April 2016. She is serving a five-year jail sentence for alleged sedition – a charge she has always denied.
Ratcliffe and his supporters have held multiple protests and vigils in London to ask for her release in the past two years.
The Free Nazanin campaign said that after several weeks of bureaucracy over her possible temporary furlough, Zaghari Ratcliffe was told earlier on Thursday that she had 10 minutes to get ready because she was being released.
She was not allowed to call her family and had to borrow a phone from someone outside the prison to call her brother, who lives in Tehran, to pick her up.
She then called her husband and the British embassy and travelled to join the rest of her Iranian family in Damavand. — AFP