Johnson ‘to help jailed mother during tour’

Foreign Minister Boris Johnson yesterday travelled to Oman as he tries to free a detained Britishiranian woman held for months by the Islamic Republic.

He met with Oman’s ruler, Sultan Qaboos bin Said, and discussed regional issues, the state-run Oman News Agency reported. Yusuf bin Alawi Abdullah, the Omani minister in charge of foreign affairs, also attended the meeting.

Johnson will head to Tehran today as part of his three-nation Gulf tour, which the Foreign Office described as a trip focusing in part on the Iran nuclear deal and “how to bring an end to the conflict in Yemen”. It is expected he will try to free Nazanin Zaghariratcliffe, who is serving a five-year prison sentence for allegedly planning the “soft toppling” of Iran’s government.