Nazanin coming home will be at the top of my list of hopes for 2019
As I sit at home, making new year’s resolutions and weighing up life’s most important questions – “vegan or flexitarian?”; “almond milk or soya?” – my mind keeps turning to one woman, whose sole wish for the coming 12 months is that her nightmare finally be over.
Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to give you news about Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe as we head into 2019. But there is nothing. The British-Iranian mother is about to mark her third new year in prison in Tehran, separated from her husband and four-year-old daughter, over spying charges that she has always insisted are false. It is a year since she was marked eligible for early release – something that increasingly looks like a cruel hoax by the Iranian authorities.
On Boxing Day, the charity
worker spent her 40th birthday in jail, something Amnesty International called a “day of anguish”. Her husband, Richard – who has summoned every ounce of strength he has to keep his wife’s plight on the agenda – gave interviews, saying that she feared it would be too late to have another child by the time she is freed.
As her health deteriorates, I think it’s fair to assume that, for Nazanin, every day is as painful as the last. I can scarcely believe it is almost three years since I first published an article about her arrest – back then, the worst-case scenario was that it would take a few months, perhaps until Christmas 2016, to bring her home.
On Twitter, last week, Jeremy Hunt wrote: “If the thoughts and prayers of a whole nation can make a difference to you and other innocent people detained in Iran then this will be the last birthday you will be suffering such a great injustice.”
I, for one, will be adding Nazanin to my list of hopes and wishes for the coming 12 months. I hope you do the same.