Nazanin: UK official watched me sign false confession

NAZANIN ZAGHARI-RATCLIFFE was watched by British officials while being forced to sign a “dehumanising” false confession claiming she was a spy, she has revealed in her first interview.

The 44-year-old Iranian-british dual citizen was detained in Iran from April 2016 to March 16 this year on charges of espionage for the British Government. She was freed after the UK settled a historic debt to Iran.

However, in her first interview with the media after her release, Mrs

Zaghari-ratcliffe said that when she met Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister said her detention “was about the debt”.

Speaking to Emma Barnett for the BBC, she said she was made to sign a false confession to a string of accusations that she has always vehemently denied in front of a British Government official and told how she did not believe she was going home “until such time that I got on the plane”.

“I was made to sign the forced confession at the airport in the presence of the British Government,” she said. “They told me that you won’t be able to get on the plane. And I knew that that was like a last-minute game… They told me that they have been given the money. So what is the point of making me sign a piece of paper which is incorrect.”

Asked if a British official was with her while she signed it, Mrs Zaghari-ratcliffe replied: “She was with me. Yeah, but also the whole thing was filmed. They enjoy showing how scary they are and the desperation of people.”

“It is dehumanising, in my opinion, if you force someone to sign something… First of all, I have finished my sentence, but also I haven’t done it. Why would I sign something? I have been trying very, very hard for the past six years to say I have not done it.” Mrs Zaghari-ratcliffe, a project manager for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, was arrested on spying charges while visiting her parents who live in Iran, with her then two-year-old daughter Gabriella, on April 3, 2016. In September that year, she was accused of plotting to overthrow the Iranian government and was given a five-year sentence. In April last year, she was sentenced to a further year on charges of propaganda against the government.

Her husband Richard Ratcliffe mounted a tireless campaign to free his wife, including twice going on hunger strike. Her release came after the UK Government paid a £400 million debt to Iran dating back to the 1970s.

However, both governments have said the two issues should not be linked.

In the interview, which was broadcast last night on BBC One and will air today on Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, Mrs Zaghari-ratcliffe spoke of what she endured as “an open-ended sentence, and open-ended abuse”.

The Foreign Office described Ms Zaghari-ratcliffe’s plight as an “horrendous ordeal”, adding: “Throughout that time, the UK Government was working tirelessly to end her unfair detention.”