British mum faces 21yrs jail over new Iran spy lies
IRAN has broadcast new claims about jailed British mum Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, including that she set up a “spy network”.
The charity worker, who is serving five years in a Tehran prison, has been accused of recruiting for the banned BBC Persian service and “opposition cyber teams” – which could add 16 years to her five-year sentence.
The latest TV report was accompanied by images, which the state-run station claimed was documentary evidence, of a BBC redundancy letter from 2010, a 2010 email from Nazanin saying she worked for the BBC World Service Trust training journalists, and a 2009 letter to the British Embassy in Iran saying she was a training assistant.
Her husband Richard Ratcliffe said seeing the misleading feature, which lasted six minutes on state TV last week caused Nazanin to have a panic attack.
The piece was broadcast again on Saturday after Mrs Nazanin had spoken by phone to her supporters at a rally in Hampstead, North London.
Mr Ratcliffe said: “She was deeply shocked. She had a full panic attack and completely collapsed on her bed. She was crying, but no sound was coming out. She went completely white and had to be taken to the clinic to see the prison doctor, and he injected some sedatives to calm her down.”
Iranian state TV said: “The BBC team in which Nazanin was a member designed, programmed and executed the Iran Project from 2007 for three years. According to this document, Nazanin had eight important duties in the fields of training and recruitment for the purpose of launching the BBC Persian service, espionage institutions and opposition cyber teams.”
Nazanin was arrested in April 2016, as she was about to return from a holiday visiting relatives with her young daughter Gabriella.
Mr Ratcliffe told the Mirror: “These are outrageous misrepresentations. None of this is new. This was all at her first trial, her appeal and everything else – and partly it’s to justify the fact they’re taking her to court again
“They’re suggesting it’s something new and that’s why they’re publicising it. I mean it’s outrageous – it’s to justify it to their own population.”