Jailed British charity worker to face second trial in Iran

AN AID worker in jail in Iran is to face a second trial on new charges.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, 39, who has dual British and Iranian nationality, has been in prison for two years on charges of “spreading propaganda against the state”.

She was arrested at a Tehran airport when she and her daughter, Gabriella, two, were about to return to the UK after a family visit.

During her first trial, Ms ZaghariRatcliffe, who works for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of the news agency, denied accusations of running “a BBC Persian online journalism course” and seeking a “soft overthrow” of the Islamic Republic. According to reports from Iran last week, she was brought to court again, although the authorities initially denied it was to face a second trial.

Iran’s judiciary brought a new case against her in October, based on claims of fresh evidence that appeared to include a BBC pay stub and contents of her personal email.

However, by December, the case appeared to have been stopped when Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary, visited Tehran and authorities later said the new trial had been cancelled.

But Musa Ghazanfarabadi, head of Tehran Revolutionary Court, confirmed the second trial, saying the new case was “security-related”.