I am relieved for her, admits husband as Nazanin ends jail hunger strike
NAZANIN ZAGHARI-RATCLIFFE has ended her hunger strike in an Iranian prison after 15 days, prompting her husband to end his own protest outside the country’s London embassy.
Richard Ratcliffe told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme that his wife brought her stand to an end by eating porridge with an apple and banana.
He has spent almost three weeks outside the Iranian embassy on hunger strike himseld. Mr Ratcliffe said: “It was getting hard for me, but it was much harder for her. I am relieved, because I wouldn’t have wanted her to push it much longer.” The couple began their hunger strike after their daughter Gabriella’s fifth birthday.
The girl has not been allowed to leave Iran following her mother’s 2016 arrest on spying charges, and now lives with her grandparents.
Mr Ratcliffe said the last few days had been a real struggle for his wife, a British-Iranian dual citizen, and she had been under pressure from guards to end her protest. He said: “She will go to the prison clinic as soon as possible to do a blood test. I am fragile, but broadly I have got through it.
“My experience has been sitting on a doorstep with people coming up with flowers and cards and messages of support, so it’s been emotionally great although physically challenging.”
He added: “We have certainly got the Iranian diplomats cross. They were building a fence to block us off and trolling us on social media and with articles saying I was breaking the Vienna convention. But part of the aim was to bring the problem to their doorstep, so I am glad that happened.”
Jeremy Hunt, the Foreign Secretary and Tory leadership candidate, said yesterday: “Richard Ratcliffe’s campaign to free Nazanin has been so brave. By publicising the outrageous injustice of her imprisonment he has bought to global attention something that affects many others.”
Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe was arrested in April 2016 at Tehran Airport as she and Gabriella prepared to board a plane back to the UK following a visit to her family in Iran.
She was sentenced to five years in the notorious Evin Prison for spying, charges she says are false.
‘My experience has been sitting on a doorstep with people coming up with flowers and cards’