Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe: British-Iranian assistant has removed his ankle monitor, but faces new court date

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Zaghari-Ratcliffe has been under house arrest for nearly a year due to the coronavirus pandemic. His five-year sentence was due to end on Sunday.

“I’m still trying to get control of what’s going on, but the news is mixed,” Richard Ratcliffe told CNN. The ankle tag of the first case is off, but Nazanin has been summoned to court next week for the second case. So the games go on. “

Iranian semi-official news agency Isna quoted Nazanin-Zaghari’s lawyer, Hojjat Kermani, as saying he would be tried on his other charge on March 14.

UK Secretary of State Dominic Raab said he welcomed the news. “We welcome the removal of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s ankle tag, but Iran’s continued treatment is intolerable,” he tweeted Sunday. “He should be allowed to return to the UK as soon as possible to reunite with his family.”

On Sunday, British MP Tulip Siddiq, who has been in contact with Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s family, said Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s first trip after removing the tag on his ankle would be to visit his grandmother.

Photo of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe with his daughter Gabriella.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe, an employee of the Thomson Reuters Foundation, was detained at Tehran airport in April 2016. She tried to return home to London after visiting family with her 22-month-old daughter Gabriella.

The Iranian government accused her of working with organizations that allegedly tried to overthrow the regime, charges she and the Thomson Reuters Foundation constantly denied. She was sentenced to five years in prison.

In September, Iranian state media reported that Zaghari-Ratcliffe and his defense attorney were summoned to the “Branch 15” court to face new charges, but did not provide further details. It is not yet clear what the new charges may entail.
The British government described the new charges as “indefensible and unacceptable”.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe, now 42, was transferred from prison to house arrest during the height of the coronavirus pandemic in Iran. According to the British government, he was still under house arrest earlier this year.

In 2019 he was granted British diplomatic protection and Amnesty International has appointed him a prisoner of conscience.

Speaking to Parliament earlier this year, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the government “was doing everything possible” to secure Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s release from “totally unjustified detention in Tehran”.

Iranian state television broadcasts an invisible video of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe
Johnson has been personally involved in the case. In 2017, when he was Foreign Minister, he was forced to apologize after a serious mistake in which he told a parliamentary committee that Zaghari-Ratcliffe had been teaching journalism during his visit to Iran. She later clarified that she had been visiting relatives before she was arrested.
The comments appeared to lead to Zaghari-Ratcliffe being summoned to an unscheduled court hearing, in which Johnson’s statements were cited as evidence that he had been involved in “propaganda against the regime.” A month later, he traveled to Tehran to push for the release of bipolitical nationals detained in Iran.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe has maintained at least three hunger strikes since she was arrested, one of them in a desperate attempt to receive medical treatment for lumps in her breasts and numbness in her limbs. Last February, his family said they believed he had contracted the coronavirus at Evin Prison on the outskirts of Tehran. In August 2018, Zaghari-Ratcliffe was treated at the hospital after suffering panic attacks, her husband said. In 2019, her followers said she was taken to the mental ward of a Tehran hospital and that her father denied her visits.

Lindsay Isaac and Hande Atay Alam contributed to this report.

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