LONDON (Parliament Politics Magazine) – The UK administration said on Wednesday that 2 British nationals who had been detained in Iran for years will be returning home, putting an end to long ordeals that have affected ties between London and Tehran.
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who has been held in Iran for over 6 years, is “in the air” and on her way back to the United Kingdom, according to Tulip Siddiq, a local politician who posted a photograph of the charity worker boarding the plane on Twitter.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe, 43, will return to the UK on Wednesday, according to Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Foreign Secretary Liz Truss. They also said that Anoosheh Ashoori, a former engineer in his 60s who has now been detained in Iran since 2017, was on his way back to the United Kingdom.
They will be reunited with their families today, according to Truss, who did not indicate when or where this will happen.
It’s a pleasant ending for Zaghari-family Ratcliffe’s and friends, who have been campaigning for her freedom since April 2016. In October, her husband Richard Ratcliffe, who resides in London with their 6-year-old daughter Gabriella, embarked on a fasting protest to draw attention to her situation. According to NBC NEWS, he discontinued it after 21 days.
Ashoori and Zaghari-Ratcliffe are dual Iranian-UK nationals who were detained while visiting relatives in Iran, according to the British government, on spurious allegations.
Iran is accused of holding the British people in detention in order to push the United Kingdom to settle a conflict dating back to the 1970s. Iran claims Britain owes it $524 million in compensation for a cancelled tank deal. The United Kingdom has said that it is ready to pay the loan.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe was found guilty of attempting to overthrow the Iranian administration and was sentenced to 5 years in prison. After participating in a demonstration just outside of the Iranian Embassy in London in 2009, she was sentenced to further time last year on a conviction of promoting anti-system propaganda.
Ashoori was convicted of espionage for Israel and sentenced to 10 years in jail, an accusation his family dismissed as “bogus.”
Human rights organisations claim that US, British, and other Western citizens detained in Iran are being kept on false accusations, and that Tehran leverages imprisoned foreigners as negotiating tools and as a means of extracting ransom payments.
Staff at the Thomson Reuters Foundation, where Zaghari-Ratcliffe formerly worked, were “overjoyed” to hear of her release, according to Antonio Zappulla, chief executive.
The Iranian administration “categorically rejects” accusations that both individuals, and others held by the government, are “hostages,” according to a spokesperson for the Iranian delegation to the United Nations last year.
Image via Reuters
