Nazanin’s husband asks UN for help

THE husband of jailed mother Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe last night filed a special request to the UN, asking for it to work with the UK and Iran to see her freed.

An ‘urgent intervention’ is needed to secure her release from prison, Richard Ratcliffe said, as he also warned it was ‘inevitable’ his wife would face an ‘autumn in court’ unless Britain and other states ‘called out’ hostage-taking as a crime.

Iran swore in a new president this week, Ebrahim Raisi, known as the Butcher of Tehran, who said he is not interested in prisoner swaps with the West while Iran remains under international sanctions.

Mr Ratcliffe had hoped the Government’s negotiations with Iran would finally deliver. He added: ‘But these weeks’ events – Iran’s announcements that hostage negotiations are again on hold, and attacks on shipping that resulted in two lost lives – were a signal that things have again turned for the worse with the change of government in Iran.

‘I met the Foreign Secretary this week to get his sense of things. He insisted negotiations had come close, hoped they could be picked up again under the new regime, and that he was determined not to leave any Brits behind. This new submission to the UN is our first step in that call.’

Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe, 43, was sentenced to five years in prison in Iran in 2016 on trumped-up spying charges. But after her release this year she was convicted of ‘spreading propaganda against the regime’.

A Government spokesman said: ‘Iran’s continued arbitrary detention of our dual nationals is unacceptable. We urge the Iranian authorities to release the detainees without any further delay.’