British woman sentenced to 5 years on security charges
TEHRAN: Iran’s judiciary said on Sunday it had rejected a final appeal request and finalised a five-year prison sentence for a British-Iranian dual citizen who was detained last April.
“Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s five-year jail sentence has been finalised. She has been charged over a security allegation,” First Deputy Chief Justice Golamhossein Mohseni-Ejei told a news conference in Tehran.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a project manager with the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of the Reuters news agency, was found guilty in September of unspecified charges relating to national security.
Although the Iranian judiciary has generally said that the allegations against Zaghari-Ratcliffe are linked to “national security”, the exact reason why the 38-yearold was convicted in Iran remains unclear.
The Revolutionary Guards, a branch of Iran’s armed forces, members of whom arrested Zaghari-Ratcliffe at an airport in April while she was about to return to Britain after a family visit, has accused her of fomenting a “soft overthrow” of the Islamic republic.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s husband, Richard Ratcliffe, said she had been in Iran for a family visit with the couple’s 2-yearold daughter.
“They have done nothing to jeopardise Iranian national security,” he said.
The couple’s daughter has been living with her grandmother and has not been able to see her mother since she was detained, he added.
It is not the first time that Iran has issued jail sentences for people with dual citizenship. Last October, two Iranian-American dual citizens received 10-year jail terms for “having cooperated with a hostile country, the United States”.
Iran does not recognise dual nationality, meaning those detained cannot receive consular assistance from their other home nations.
Often dual nationals have faced charges in closed-door hearings in Iran’s Revolutionary Court, which handles cases involving alleged attempts to harm the country’s “national interests”.
Iranian Intelligence Minister Mahmoud Alavi has issued an ultimatum to officials with dual nationality, telling them to choose between their jobs and retaining dual nationality.
His remarks came after an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps official warned in September that the intelligence agencies of Iran’s enemies are paying special attention to dual nationals in their “infiltration project”.
Last September, on the sidelines of a UN meeting, British Prime Minister Theresa May asked Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to help secure Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s freedom, but was told that the Iranian government said that “the judiciary is independent”, and that it is not able to interfere in its decisions.
An online petition calling for Ms May to secure Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s release, started by her husband, has attracted more than 850,000 signatures.