Johnson seeks to clarify remarks about Briton jailed in Iran

British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson called his Iranian counterpart on Tuesday in a bid to clarify remarks that left him accused of jeopardising the case of a British-Iranian woman jailed in Tehran.

Johnson faced calls to resign after telling a parliamentary committee Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was training journalists in Iran when she was arrested for alleged sedition in 2016, a comment her employer and her family insisted he correct.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe appeared in court on Saturday to face further charges that carry a 16-year jail term. The Iranian judiciary issued a statement saying Johnson’s comments proved that she was not on holiday, as her family had said, backing the justification for new charges.

In the call with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, Johnson said the suggestion that his remarks “shed new light” on the case was “absolutely not true” as it was clear she had been on holiday, a Foreign Office spokesman said.

He said Johnson had been seeking to make the point that “he condemned the Iranian view that training journalists was a crime, not that he believed Iranian allegations that Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe had been engaged in such activity”.

Johnson said his remarks “could form no justifiable basis for further action in this case” and called for her release on humanitarian grounds.

Zarif said the weekend developments were not related to Johnson’s remarks and he remained committed to working together to resolve the case on humanitarian grounds, the Foreign Office spokesman said.

Johnson accepted his remarks “could have been clearer”, the spokesman said.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a project manager for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the media organisation’s philanthropic arm, was arrested at Tehran airport on April 3 2016 after visiting family. Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards accused her of having taken part in the “sedition movement” of protests that followed the disputed 2009 re-election of then president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a hardliner.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe denies the charges. She is serving a fiveyear jail sentence in Tehran but in October was presented with extra charges carrying a possible 16-year prison term.

Thomson Reuters Foundation said those charges were that she had joined organisations working to overthrow the regime, referring to her media charity work in London, and that she once attended a demonstration outside the Iranian embassy in Britain’s capital.

Thomson Reuters Foundation CE Monique Villa welcomed Johnson’s clarification.

“Nazanin has never trained journalists in Iran. It’s time now for the foreign secretary to meet Nazanin in jail, as he proposed last week, and to bring her back home,” Villa said.

IT’S TIME NOW FOR THE FOREIGN SECRETARY TO MEET NAZANIN IN JAIL AND TO BRING HER BACK HOME