Zaghari-Ratcliffe to go on hunger strike after being denied medical care
▶ She will be joined by another high-profile inmate, the activist Narges Mohammadi
Two high-profile women prisoners at Iran’s Evin jail will go on hunger strike to protest against being denied medical treatment.
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian dual national, and Iranian rights campaigner Narges Mohammadi announced they would start a three-day protest on January 14 and continue until their demands were met.
Both women have complained of health problems including numbness and paralysis linked to neurological problems, but have been refused numerous requests for hospital checks and treatment.
Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe has spent more than 1,000 days in prison after she was arrested at Tehran’s airport while returning to the UK from visiting family with her young daughter.
She was jailed for five years on unspecified espionage allegations that state media has linked to her current and former employment with the charitable wings of international news organisations.
They suggested she was seeking to undermine the regime.
Her supporters said she was the pawn in a broader political game that has had profound personal consequences.
Her family is split between the UK and Iran and her hopes of having more children are dwindling after she marked her 40th birthday in custody on December 26.
Her husband, Richard Ratcliffe, said that prison officials had refused to allow doctors to examine lumps in her breasts or treatment for numbness in her arms and legs.
Medical restrictions for all prisoners appear to have tightened since she was given three days leave to stay with her family in Iran in August, he said. “The prison has blocked all sorts of treatment in the last couple of months,” he told The National. “Someone who had a heart attack was allowed out, but that’s about it.”
Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe told her husband on Tuesday about her plans for the hunger strike after weeks of despair about the possibility for release. She shares a wing for political prisoners with Ms Mohammadi.
“Nazanin has again been driven to despair because of the hopelessness of her plight,” the couple’s MP, Tulip Siddiq, said in a tweet.
“What is the PM’s plan to bring her home? Quiet diplomacy has failed.”
The Foreign Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, said that Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe was innocent and should be allowed home.
“How can the Iranian authorities allow an innocent mother to feel she needs to resort to this?” he wrote in a tweet.
Ms Mohammadi, 46, is serving a 16-year sentence for spreading propaganda and campaigning to stop the death penalty.
She served previous jail terms for helping the families of political prisoners.
The sentence is the latest for the campaigner and deputy director of the Iranian Defenders of Human Rights Centre, set up by the Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi in London.
Ms Mohammadi went on hunger strike in 2016 after the authorities refused to allow her to speak by phone to her children, who live in Paris with their father, Taghi Rahmani.
Mr Rahmani was described by Reporters without Borders as Iran’s most frequently jailed journalist for his work with underground newspapers.