‘Iran officials doing best to free Brit mother’ – diplomat

THE Iranian government is doing its best to secure the release of Nazanin ZaghariRatcliffe from jail, a diplomat has insisted.

Officials are involved in “intensive dialogue” with the judiciary to try to release the British mother on humanitarian grounds, according to Hamid Baeidinejad.

The Iranian ambassador to the UK said the judicial process was “complicated” but insisted “we are trying our best”.

He told BBC Two’s Newsnight: “We are doing our best to talk to our judiciary and see what we can do for her, in fact, to use some of the provisions as humanitarian grounds to help her return home and be with her child.”

Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe, pictured above, has been imprisoned in Iran for two years after being stopped at the airport in Tehran on April 3, 2016.

She was subsequently jailed for five years, accused of seeking to overthrow the Iranian regime.

Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe denies the charges, insisting that the trip to Iran was a holiday, designed to introduce her daughter to her Iranian family.

Her employer Thompson Reuters, where she is a project manager for its charitable foundation, says she was in the country to visit relatives and not there for work.

Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe, whose sister-in-law Rebecca Jones is a GP living in Cardiff, is a dual citizen of Iran and the United Kingdom, but Iran does not recognise dual citizenship, making it complicated for the British Embassy to make contact.