Iran wants Zaghari-Ratcliffe to spy for them, husband says
▶ British foreign office summons Tehran’s ambassador as anger grows
Interrogators from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard tried to pressure a detained British-Iranian national to become a spy for the regime in return for her freedom, her husband said yesterday.
The two men visited Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe at Tehran’s Evin Prison to ask her to collect information about the UK’s Department for International Development and a small London campaigning organisation.
Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe, 40, was told “it would be better for her and her family in future if she co-operated”, her husband Richard was told.
Days after the visit, she announced the start of a threeday hunger strike with fellow prisoner Narges Mohammadi, an Iranian human rights activist. Both women have been refused medical checks and treatment for long-standing problems.
The interrogators visited Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe on December 29, the day after she marked 1,000 days in prison, Mr Ratcliffe said yesterday as the pair started their hunger strike.
She was arrested in April, 2016, on unspecified charges after visiting her parents in Iran with her daughter Gabriella, now 4.
Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who works for the charitable arm of media organisation the Thomson Reuters Foundation, has been widely portrayed by Iranian state media as a spy. She was told that if she did not co-operate with the request to spy for Iran, the authorities had the power to hold her despite pressure from the UK government, her supporters said.
Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe was told to think about the request for a few days before the men returned for her answer, but they have not been back since she revealed her plans to go on hunger strike.
Her family said she believed the visit from the two officials followed condemnation of the Iranian regime by UK Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt on her 1,000th day in custody.
It was the first time since she was arrested that she was asked to spy, her family said.
Mr Hunt summoned the Iranian ambassador to the Foreign Office yesterday where he discussed the lack of medical care. His department did not say if he raised the issue of the attempt to persuade her to spy on the UK government.
Last November, Mr Hunt raised Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s case with Iranian officials during his visit to the Islamic Republic.
He retweeted pictures of him meeting her family and playing with her young daughter, saying: “No child should have to go this long without their mother.”
Mr Ratcliffe said he had written to the Iranian Foreign Minister, Javad Zarif, to protest against her treatment and the attempt to co-opt her into spying. “Not only is it outrageous after all the abuse she has been put through by the Iranian authorities to demand she co-operates to ensure the safety of herself and those she cares for, it is also narcissistic,” he wrote.
“Who do they think they are to hold Nazanin’s and Gabriella’s life in thrall merely as a demonstration of their own power to themselves?
“It is also asking her to do things that are patently absurd. The fact remains that all this is built on a mum and a baby.”
A senior medical official from Evin visited the two women on the eve of the hunger strike, offering medical assistance to try to prevent the protest.
The women decided to press ahead with the plans after the official refused to give a written undertaking that they would receive all necessary treatment.
Monique Villa, chief executive of the Thomson Reuters Foundation, said the refusal to administer medical tests amounted to “slow and cruel torture”.
“As her employer, I repeat that Nazanin is totally innocent and certainly not spy material as portrayed by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard,” Ms Villa said.