‘I faced months of hell in the same prison as Nazanin’
Nazanin Zaghari-ratcliffe had no reason to suspect that her visit to see her parents in Iran would end with her spending more than three years subjected to physical and psychological torture in a Tehran prison.
But had the British-iranian charity worker known that just four months earlier, another young woman was secretly detained in the country on similarly spurious charges of spying for the UK Government, she may have thought twice about the trip with her young daughter in spring 2016.
Ana has never spoken about her detention in Iran. But she has decided to reveal her brutal experience in one of the world’s most feared prisons to shed light on the Islamic Republic’s ruthless diplomatic strategy of using dual-nationals as pawns in its stand-off with the West.
“There are a countless number of cases like Nazanin,” says Ana, 24, who spoke to The Telegraph this week on condition that her surname not be published to protect her family.
“Many of us were threatened with longer sentences by the judiciary if we even thought of going public.”
Ana, who holds Iranian and Finnish citizenship but grew up in the UK, had travelled from London to Tehran with her parents for a family reunion in July 2014. It was their first time back since they were forced to flee to Finland in the late Nineties, when Ana’s reformist cleric father was arrested for writing an article about corruption within the regime.
The moment they landed, Ana, then aged 19, was taken into a back room of the airport. In their search of her social media they found evidence of a visit to Israel, with whom Iran is technically at war, and pictures of her with Boris Johnson and other Tory MPS from her days as a member of the Young Conservatives.
When the officers asked if she was spying for the Israeli and British governments, she assumed they were joking. They let the family enter but held on to Ana’s passports, her laptop and phone, and placed them all on an indefinite travel ban. A few weeks
‘Many of us were threatened with longer sentences by the judiciary if we even thought of going public’
later, her father was taken for interrogation, and eventually released.
For a while, all seemed calm. Ana, unable to return to London to finish the final year of her degree, took up an internship at the United Nations in Tehran.
Then, on her way to work one day, a van pulled up and masked agents detained her. They already had her father. That same day she appeared in court, where the prosecutor read out a list of accusations, 52 in total, including espionage, blasphemy, and corruption on earth. Ana denied them all. Three of her accused offences were capital crimes.
“So I was given the death penalty,” she says.
Since the US pulled out of the nuclear deal and reimposed sanctions last year, more than a dozen dualnationals and Iranians are known to have been detained by Tehran, including, most recently, British Council worker Aras Amiri, 33, and French-iranian university researcher Fariba Adelkhah.
Mrs Zaghari-ratcliffe’s husband Richard told The Telegraph there is a private network of families of detainees who meet to discuss their cases, and that he believes there has been a rise.
“In Parliament last Wednesday, they said [Nazanin] was an innocent person held for diplomatic leverage,” he says. “So there is increasing recognition by governments that what is going on is a hostage crisis.”
Once sentenced, Ana was taken straight to Evin Prison’s 2A solitary confinement wing, where she was held for eight months.
“There was barely space to lie down to sleep,” she says. “It was just a small white space, a concrete floor, and bright lights left on for 24 hours a day.
“Every time I wanted to use the bathroom, I had to slip a paper under the door and wait for one of the wardens to notice … I even wet myself because there would be days when nobody was around.”
When she heard her mother had also been arrested, Ana went on a hunger strike. Then came the mock executions.
Mrs Zaghari-ratcliffe, 40, who is serving a five-and-a-half year sentence for espionage at Evin, has only told her
‘Once they have access to the voice inside your head, and can influence it, you start to question your memories’
family a little of her treatment there, because her calls are monitored.
Ana’s account reveals the extent of the psychological torture used to break inmates. “I was put under so much mental pressure – with no access to the outside world or any reality at all – there were many moments where I thought that they must be right,” she says.
“I’d think, maybe I have met with Benjamin Netanyahu [Israel’s prime minister] like they say, and I just don’t remember it. It’s equally as horrifying as physical torture, because once they have access to the voice inside your head and are able to influence it, you start questioning your own memories.”
She was able to secure a £100,000 bail in late 2016 and was acquitted of all charges a year later. In May 2018, she had her travel ban lifted.
She returned to the UK without her parents, who were released separately in December and February.
“Hearing what Nazanin has been going through, I felt selfish for not coming forward and sharing my story,” Ana says.
“I had always defended Iran,” she says. “I made excuses for them when everyone called them a terrorist state: they are under huge pressure from the US, from sanctions, from others in the region, I would tell them.
“But they turned out to be what everyone always said they were.”