Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
British woman back in Iran court
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — A trial to present new charges against a British-Iranian woman detained for five years in Iran convened Sunday, her supporters said, casting uncertainty over her future after her release from prison.
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe appeared in court to face charges of “spreading propaganda against the regime,” said Richard Ratcliffe, who has vigorously campaigned for his wife’s release.
Iranian authorities had introduced the new indictment months ago, but adjourned the trial until Zaghari-Ratcliffe completed her five-year sentence on widely rebutted spying charges last week. A verdict was expected within several days, Ratcliffe said.
“The charges are not particularly relevant since the point of reviving this case again last week was simply to hold Nazanin for leverage as negotiations with the U.K .have intensified,” he said.
The latest twist in Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s case comes as Britain and Iran negotiate a long-running dispute over a debt of some $530 million owed to Tehran by London. Before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the late Iranian Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi paid the sum for Chieftain tanks that were never delivered.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe, 42, was sentenced to five years in prison after being convicted of plotting the overthrow of Iran’s government, a charge that she, her supporters and rights groups deny. While employed at the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of the news agency, she was taken into custody at the Tehran airport in April 2016 as she was returning home to Britain after visiting family.
Throughout the years, Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s detention has sparked international anger over Iran’s human-rights record and strained ties between Britain and Iran. Now, a week after she was allowed to remove her ankle monitor and leave house arrest, she remains stuck, unable to fly home to her family in London. Authorities had released Zaghari-Ratcliffe from prison on furlough last March because of the surging coronavirus pandemic, and she had been detained in her parents’ Tehran home since.
Sunday morning’s hearing was brief, Ratcliffe said, noting that his wife appeared before a branch of the country’s Revolutionary Court in Tehran, where she was first sentenced on murky espionage charges in 2017. Judge Abolghassem Salavati, who is known for his tough sentences and has heard other politically charged cases, “was calm and polite,” he said.
British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab denounced the new case against Zaghari-Ratcliffe as “wholly arbitrary,” adding that “she must be allowed to return to her family in the UK without delay.”
Iranian state-run media did not immediately report the trial. But the country’s pro-reform Shargh daily said on its Telegram news channel that the final trial on propaganda charges had been held “in complete peace” in Tehran.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe was permitted to make a personal statement in which she denied the charges of spreading propaganda and requested a fair trial, Ratcliffe added.
Although Sunday’s hearing promised to be the last, the length of Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s detention is unclear.
“I hope it is all done. I hope I’m not going to see them all again, and that this is the end,” Zaghari-Ratcliffe said in a statement after the hearing. “All we can do is wait.”