Don’t speak of Iran-plot prison term, husband told

THE parents of detained British-Iranian mother Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe urged her husband not to reveal her jail sentence for fear of making her situation worse, her husband said.

The 37-year-old, who was accused of plotting to topple the Iranian regime, was jailed for five years by Judge Salavati, of Iran’s Revolutionary Court, on Tuesday – the day after the UK and Iran upgraded embassy relations.

Her sentence was revealed on Friday afternoon, when she was allowed to telephone her husband, who branded it “a punishment without a crime”.

The charity worker from Hampstead, north-west London, was arrested at Imam Khomeini airport on April 3 as she was trying to return to Britain after a holiday visiting family with her daughter, Gabriella.

The toddler, who celebrated her second birthday in June without her mother or father, had her passport confiscated and is being cared for by her grandparents in Tehran, who speak little English.

Mr Ratcliffe said his wife had begged him over the phone to do “whatever you can” to free her from Evin prison, which she described as “horrendous”.

He said: “Certainly, my family in Iran – my in-laws – would like me to stop and requested me, with great sincerity and fear, that I shouldn’t reveal the fact that she’d been sentenced, we should let the lawyer do his job and wait for the appeal. We just had to take a different judgement of it.

“It is important for me to be consistent and I will continue to speak out about my wife and daughter until they are both home.”

Speaking after the news emerged on Friday, Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s sister-inlaw, Cwmbran GP Rebecca Jones, 36, said: “Obviously we are quite sad and devastated by the news. It seems so cruel.”