Foreign Secretary must take action, say mum’s family

THE family of a British woman jailed in Iran have demanded further action from Boris Johnson, after the country’s state TV broadcast a report claiming that the Foreign Secretary’s comments in Parliament amounted to an “unintended admission” of her guilt.

The report said Mr Johnson’s suggestion that Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was “training journalists” when arrested in Iran last year had “dealt a blow” to the efforts of campaigners and UK authorities to support her position that she was in fact on holiday.

It comes as Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s sister-in-law Rebecca Jones, who lives in Cardiff and is a GP in Cwmbran, called for Mr Johnson to visit her in Iran to increase pressure.

Mr Johnson has admitted that his comments “could have been clearer”, and told MPs on Tuesday that the UK Government “has no doubt that she was on holiday” in Iran.

He told Iran’s foreign minister Javad Zarif in a phone call that there was “no justifiable basis” for further legal action and said he had received assurances that recent developments in her case were not linked to his remarks.

But Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s husband Richard said Wednesday’s broadcast showed that Mr Johnson’s actions so far “do not look sufficient”.

In a statement, the Free Nazanin Campaign said: “Iranian state evening news ran a long feature on Nazanin, using the Foreign Secretary’s words last week to discredit Nazanin and negate the efforts to release her. Assurances given this week do not look sufficient.

“The UK Government should not be in denial about the gravity of the situation or the abuse Nazanin is suffering at the hands of the Iranian authorities.

“The Government’s first duty – both governments’ first duty – is to protect its citizens.”

Mr Ratcliffe said he wanted to take up Mr Johnson’s offer of a meeting to discuss the case, and wanted to join the Foreign Secretary on his planned trip to Iran, due to take place before the end of the year.

He also urged the Foreign Secretary to ensure that a Farsi translation of Mr Johnson’s “clarification” should be issued to the Iranian media and posted on the website of Britain’s embassy in Tehran.

Following Mr Johnson’s comments last week, Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe was summoned before an unscheduled court hearing at which she was threatened with the doubling of her five-year jail sentence.

Wednesday’s TV broadcast said that the British media and authorities had spent the last year trying to emphasise Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s innocence “until last week, the UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson utters a sentence that proves costly for the government of this country”.

It added: “Just this one sentence from the Foreign Secretary was enough to deal a blow to all the attempts of the British media and authorities in the past few months.

“It appears that the statement of Boris Johnson was an antidote to all the statements of various media and UK authorities who had been claiming in the past year-and-a-half that Nazanin ZaghariRatcliffe had come to Iran for humanitarian reasons.”

Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s employers, the Thomson Reuters Foundation, issued a statement in response to the Iranian TV reports, reiterating that she had never taken part in the training of journalists.

The foundation’s chief executive Monique Villa said: “Nazanin is not a human rights activist with Thomson Reuters Foundation. She is a project manager in our media development team.

“At the foundation, we don’t do advocacy work: we are ruled by the Trust Principles of Thomson Reuters which impose freedom from bias, independence and impartial reporting.

“Nazanin has never been a journalist, hence could never have trained journalists.”

This week, Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe sisterin-law Rebecca, 37, spoke out about the implications of Mr Johnson’s comments.

She said: “It’s been a tough week for us. When we first heard him [Boris Johnson] speak about the case last week we were very pleased he had openly criticised them.

“But it was only later, when she was taken to court, that we realised the possible implications.

“We are pleased with his apology and grateful for that.

“You don’t really know how things play out in Iran, but it was really important for our family for him to retract the comments and quickly.

“I think he now needs to go and visit Nazanin because that will increase the pressure.

“The dream is to get them both home for Christmas and Mr Johnson visiting would certainly help with that.”