Nazanin is feeling suicidal and having panic attacks.. Iran must set her free

Husband’s plea after jailed Brit’s hopes dashed

BRITISH mum Nazanin ZaghariRatcliffe is suicidal after three years behind bars, her fearful husband has revealed.

The 40-year-old went into “meltdown” and suffered a panic attack after Iran withdrew a surprise offer to free her through a prisoner swap.

The attack was so severe a shocked psychiatrist insisted she be moved to hospital – yet she is still in prison.

Now her frantic husband Richard Ratcliffe is calling on Iranian authorities to release her before daughter Gabriella’s fifth birthday next month, fearing the worst if she is not.

Richard, who wants Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt to seek freedom on medical grounds, said: “I worry about what will happen. I don’t think the Iranian government has got long.

“This needs to be solved by Gabriella’s birthday or she will take matters into her own hands.”

Richard said Nazanin regularly talks of feeling she wants to end her life in phone calls from Iranian capital Tehran, where she is being held on charges of spying.

He said: “We have a pact. I insist she is allowed to go on hunger strike but she is not allowed to attempt suicide. That’s the way I cope with it.

“I fully accept it’s her right if we on the outside can’t help get her out – it’s her right to do something – but it needs to be something we can RICHARD RATCLIFFE ON NAZANIN’S STATE OF MIND FEARS Distraught Richard

react to, not something where it’s all too late.”

Weighing up the chances of her being able to succeed in ending her own life he said: “There would be a way if she was determined.”

Fragile Nazanin’s state plummeted on Saturday after Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif retracted the prisoner swap offer.

He had raised her hopes by suggesting he could authorise her release in return for the freeing of an Iranian woman held in Australia.

The “outrageous game playing” triggered the panic attack in jail.

Richard said: “They were horrified at how advanced her depression had got. She had a real meltdown – she was very traumatised. It is a consequence of all those things that happened last week. She goes angry and dark, and cries uncontrollably.

“She was talking to the psychiatrist about plans for a hunger strike and confessing to suicidal feelings. And she has confessed that to us.

“The psychiatrist was really shocked by how much she had deteriorated. It’s the first time they have said, ‘You must be in hospital immediately’.”

Describing a phone conversation the couple had on Sunday, Richard went on: “She kept saying, ‘You don’t understand’. It was all tears and anger.”

Charity worker Nazanin, who has dual British-Iranian citizenship, had been visiting her parents with baby

This needs to be solved or she will take things into her own hands