Zaghari-Ratcliffes granted ‘safe house’ at Dorneywood
NAZANIN ZAGHARI-RATCLIFFE and her family spent their first days together in Britain staying at a Governmentowned grace-and-favour mansion in the Buckinghamshire countryside.
The British-Iranian national, who was imprisoned in Tehran for nearly six years until her release last week, was driven from RAF Brize Norton early on Thursday to Dorneywood, a country home historically used by chancellors of the Exchequer.
She stayed there until yesterday morning with her husband Richard and daughter Gabriella, and was pictured on Friday making pizzas with them in the house’s large kitchen.
Dorneywood is an 18th-century Georgian property donated to the National Trust in 1947 by Lord Courtauld-Thomson, a businessman who had used it to house officers from the allied air forces.
It sits in 215 acres of parkland and woodland, and boasts a swimming pool, conservatory and croquet lawn once used by the house’s former occupant, John Prescott.
The prime minister can choose to allow any member of the government to use it. In recent years it has been used by chancellors Philip Hammond, Sajid Javid and Rishi Sunak.
Like Chequers, the prime minister’s grace-and-favour home, and Chevening, which is usually used by the foreign secretary, the house is managed by a trust. Government departments can request use of the house from the trust, which was this week snapped up by the Foreign Office, who designated it as a “safe house” for Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe and her family.
The family were sworn to secrecy on the location of the property in an attempt to allow them to reunite in peace, outside of the glare of the media.
Broadcasters positioned a camera outside their London house for two days after Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s return to the UK in the hope of picturing their return home.
On Friday Mr Ratcliffe tweeted that his wife and daughter were making pizzas in the kitchen at Dorneywood, accompanied by a photograph that was quickly copied by Tulip Siddiq, a Labour MP who had campaigned for his wife’s release.
The Sunday Telegraph understands he was later contacted by Foreign Office officials who asked him to delete it because they were concerned it would allow their location to be identified.
Mr Ratcliffe has been prolific in the British media since his wife’s imprisonment in Iran in April 2016, after she was accused of training journalists in the country – a claim he has always denied. He completed two hunger strikes to persuade ministers to do more to secure her release.
The Iranian regime finally agreed to allow her to leave after Liz Truss, the Foreign Secretary, negotiated a deal involving the UK repaying a decadesold debt of £400m.
Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe was accompanied by Anoosheh Ashoori, 66, a fellow British-Iranian national imprisoned by the regime in 2017. Mr Ashoori’s family said they had to pay Iran a last-minute fine of £27,000 to secure his return.
“We had less than 12 hours to raise the money, taking out loans using our credit cards, and opening new accounts,” Mr Ashoori’s wife, Sherry Izadi, told The Guardian.