MY NAZANIN’S JAIL TORMENT
Husband tells of new nightmare as Brit faces longer in Iran prison hell
BRITISH mum Nazanin ZaghariRatcliffe is on trial in Iran again raising fears she may never come home.
Yesterday t he regime’s Revolutionary Guards hauled the terrified mum-of-one, 41, back to court for what her husband Richard calls “a show trial she cannot win”.
Nazanin has been at her parents’ home in Tehran on temporary release from jail since March. In 2016 she was jailed for five years for allegedly “plotting to topple the Iranian government”, which she denies.
Speaking p g in London with the couple’s girl Gabriella, six six, Richard said: “There is nothing noth new in the charges but m my feeling is they will do some something bad.
“There’s no way they will find in her favour. We are expecting something to be added to h her sentence. “Naza Nazanin is terrified she cou could end up back in solit solitary confinement in p prison. She’s been
h having panic attacks as the memories of the first trial come flooding back. In her darkest moments she fears she will never be allowed to leave Iran.”
Gabriella, who returned to the UK last year, has been asking Richard: “When is Mummy coming home?”
Richard is frustrated by the British Government’s softly, softly approach to Iran which have so far been ineffective.
He believes his wife will only be released when the UK Government pays the interest on a £450million debt the UK has owed to Iran since the 1970s for a cancelled arms deal. The start of a second trial for Nazanin is expected to be a short hearing only in which she is unlikely to be able to speak.
It comes a day after Navid Afkari, a 27-year-old wrestler accused of killing a state security guard during protests in 2018, was executed. Human rights campaigners said Afkari confessed to the killing under immense physical and psychological duress.
Richard said that the case illustrated the “medieval brutality of the regime”.