Brit ‘used as bargaining chip’ with new jail term
Nazanin Zaghari-ratcliffe was sentenced yesterday to a year in jail followed by a ban on her leaving Iran in what her family decried as a clear attempt to keep her as a bargaining chip in negotiations with Britain.
Zaghari-ratcliffe’s lawyer was informed of her sentence a month after a court found her guilty of ‘‘propaganda’’ against the Iranian regime. She had just completed a five-year sentence on spying charges during which her detention was linked to an unpaid £400 million (NZ$770M) debt Britain owes to Tehran.
Richard Ratcliffe, her husband, said his wife was yet to receive a summons to return to prison from her parent’s house in Tehran and that an appeal would be lodged within three weeks. He said, however: ‘‘It’s probably worse than what I thought was going to come. And it’s come earlier than I thought.’’
The sentence was condemned by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary, described it as ‘‘inhumane and wholly unjustified’’.
The prime minister said: ‘‘It’s wrong that she’s in there in the first place, and we are working very hard to secure release from Iran, to return to her family here in the UK. The government will not stop and will redouble our efforts, we’re working with our American friends on this issue as well.’’
Ratcliffe said that the Foreign Office was clearly taken aback by the sentence. He had also believed his wife’s fate was ‘‘in a holding pattern’’ as negotiations over Iran’s nuclear programme unfold and the country moves closer to a presidential election in June, the latest showdown between hardliners and moderates.
‘‘Some people have just bought themselves time to hold on to Nazanin, to use her as a bargaining chip when it works for them,’’ he said. Ratcliffe said his wife ‘‘sounded calm’’ but would be very anxious once the prospect of returning to jail became real.
The charity Redress, which commissioned a report into ZaghariRatcliffe’s torture in prison, said: ‘‘Nazanin has already suffered severe physical and psychological impacts from the torture and ill-treatment she has been subjected to during the past five years. A further sentence to prison or house arrest may cause irreparable damage to her health.’’
Kate Allen, director of Amnesty, said: ‘‘The prolonging of Nazanin’s suffering has raised the odds to such a degree that the UK government must surely now act.’’ Tulip Siddiq, ZaghariRatcliffe’s MP, called the sentence ‘‘absolutely devastating news ... another abusive use of her as a bargaining chip’’.
The family’s hopes for ZaghariRatcliffe’s swift release were dashed when the latest court hearing in London over the unresolved arms debt was postponed for the fourth time in two years at Iran’s request. The debt arises from a contract for tanks that Iran struck in the 1970s but which was cancelled after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Last month Ben Wallace, the defence secretary, said it was ‘‘absolutely right’’ that Britain ‘‘should honour that debt’’.
Zaghari-ratcliffe, a project manager with the Thomson Reuters Foundation charity, was arrested at a Tehran airport in April 2016 and later convicted of plotting to overthrow the clerical establishment.
She was sentenced to five years in jail for spying, which she has always denied.
Last month she was ordered back into court to face the new propaganda charges, which she denies. ZaghariRatcliffe has insisted that the trip from the UK to Iran, during which she was arrested, was to see her mother.