Gove sticks up for Johnson over threat to Briton in Iran jail
MICHAEL Gove has been accused of compounding the threat to a British citizen jailed in Iran for spying by saying he didn’t know why she was in the country in the first place.
The Environment Secretary appeared to cast doubt on claims by the Government and Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s family that she was on holiday.
He would “take her husband’s assurance” that Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe, 38, was on holiday when she was detained 18 months ago, he said.
Labour accused him to trying to protect Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, who is under fire for claiming Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe was training journalists.
Mr Johnson’s gaffe before a Commons committee last week led to the Iranian judicial system adding extra charges, leading to fears her current five-year sentence could be doubled.
The Foreign Secretary’s “inadvertent confession” was seized on as evidence of her guilt.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and Labour’s London mayor Sadiq
Khan both said yesterday that Mr Johnson should resign or be sacked.
But Mr Gove defended him as “doing a great job” and said it was “plain wrong” to find fault with democrats when Iran had “blood on its hands”.
Asked what Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe was doing in Iran, he told BBC One’s
Andrew Marr Show: “I don’t know. One of the things I want to stress is there is no reason why Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe should be in prison in Iran so far as any of us know.”
Told that Richard Ratcliffe said his wife was on holiday, Mr Gove added: “In that case, I take exactly her husband’s assurance in that regard.
Asked if she had been training journalists, he said: “Her husband said she was there on holiday and her husband is the person who should know.”
Shadow Cabinet Office minister Jon Trickett, said: “Boris Johnson’s cavalier approach to international diplomacy is compounded by Michael Gove claiming he has no idea what Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was doing in Iran.”