Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Gabriella just wants her mum out of jail for her 4th birthday party..
Husband separated from family tells of little girl’s campaign
When she visits her mummy in prison it is often the brightly coloured pictures they draw together which reveal little Gabriella Ratcliffe’s dearest hopes.
Tellingly, it’s usually happy families she depicts – Mummy, Daddy, and Gabriella. And sometimes, a baby.
“She now asks for a brother or sister, although she says she would prefer a girl,” smiles her dad Richard, with sad eyes.
Heartbreakingly, it was always he and his wife’s wish, too, before their family was ripped in two.
Gabriella’s mummy is Nazanin Zaghari-ratcliffe, the Britishiranian jailed in Tehran after her arrest at the airport by the Revolutionary Guard in April
2016 on charges of conspiring to overthrow the regime.
She had simply been on holiday with her then 19-monthold daughter, visiting her parents, and was going home to London.
Monday will be her 800th day behind bars, and Gabriella’s fourth birthday – her third without her mum. This has prompted the little girl to pick up her crayons to express a wish that her mummy be released to come to her birthday party.
Gabriella remained with her grandparents in Tehran so she could visit her mum – a painful decision for Richard who is barred from getting a visa which would allow him to visit.
Nazanin is now eligible for furlough – a temporary release – for Gabriella’s birthday. But because it was denied in the past and the paperwork has not materialised, the family fear the worst.
So Gabriella has written to Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, and the Iranian foreign minster, pleading for help.
“One letter has a picture of a girl with flowers, a cake, and a king and queen,” says Richard. “The other is a girl with a Mummy.”
Sitting in the family’s London flat, still bulging with Gabriella’s toys, her cot, and a stack of clean nappies, both long outgrown, he adds: “I am proud she wrote letters. Like all parents you want your children to grow up confident, secure and strong, but her believing she can change the world is a good thing to try for. It’s very easy to get very cynical.”
But he adds: “Now she has written a letter she does expect her to come to her party.” Nazanin, 39, was sentenced to five years in prison with little more supposed
evidence than her previous admin job in London with BBC Media Action, and her current one with the Thomas Reuters Foundation.
Some Iranian officials have since confirmed she is a pawn in a political row with the British Government.
Gabriella’s plea to the Foreign Secretary is particularly poignant because it was Mr Johnson’s bungled intervention which first catapulted her story onto the front pages last autumn.
He mistakenly said she had been in Iran training journalists, damaging Nazanin’s defence. Despite visiting Iran, and meeting Richard three times, Nazanin’s situation has not improved.
In fact, the Iranians are hauling her to court again, this time on a new charge of spreading propaganda. It could lengthen her sentence by five or more years. Richard fears it may be a backlash against Mr Johnson’s efforts.
Both governments deny it, but Nazanin has been told her imprisonment rests on a haggle over a £450million debt from a 1970s arms deal, owed by Britain. Whatever the case, the Foreign Secretary clearly did not give the required assurances.
“We are puppets in a puppet show that you can only see part of, the rest is off stage – on both sides,” says Richard. He has met Mr Johnson three times, but never received an apology. The accountant admits he fears the birthday visit will not happen.
But for Nazanin, who is stitching a dress to give to her daughter, her positivity hinges on it.
When Richard spoke to her last Sunday – phone calls are their only communication – she was low.
“Can she promise her daughter it’s going to happen? No, and she feels that as a mum. When she is down she feels nothing can work, she gets very angry and then angry with herself,” Richard explains.
Nazanin now takes anti-depressants, sleeping tablets and medication for panic attacks. She was kept in solitary confinement for more than eight months and tortured psychologically.
Guards told her Richard had taken her baby and deserted her and she would die alone – part of the reason Richard agrees Gabriella must remain in Iran.
Nazanin admitted she wanted to end her life. “She said she had written a goodbye letter to tell me to look after Gabriella and she was sorry,” he says.
She then went on hunger strike, until her family convinced her to stop.
Richard’s mechanism for coping has been campaigning.
But the tragic truth is, while Nazanin gets to cuddle their daughter, Richard cannot and will be unable to spend her fourth birthday with her. He will, as he does three times a week, Skype her, and hope she likes the Hello Kitty watch he has sent her.
He admits though he’s beginning to feel he isn’t a “real dad” any more.
Gabriella speaks Farsi now, and has forgotten English, so they communicate through a relative. He admits: “Sometimes you get Gabriella in full disgruntled mood and I want to be better at calming her down. There is a need to learn to be a dad again.”
But, he adds: “She likes the idea of having a room here. It’s all unchanged.”
That’s as much for Nazanin, too. “She wants to come back to her home, and my job is to keep that home alive.”
www.change.org/p/free-nazanin-ratcliffe
She believes she can change the world and that’s a good thing to try for RICHARD RATCLIFFE ON HIS DAUGHTER’S JUSTICE FIGHT