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Former Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt says the UK is “starting to look weak” due to its inability to protect citizens imprisoned in Iran, such as Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe.
The 42-year-old British-Iranian dual national has been detained in Iran since 2016, when she was sentenced to five years in prison on charges, which she denies, of conspiring to overthrow the Iranian government.
The UK government has granted him diplomatic protection, arguing that he is innocent and that his treatment by Iran did not comply with obligations under international law.
Hunt wrote in the Times that for diplomatic protection to make sense there had to be consequences for Tehran.
“It is not clear to me that there have been any; something that starts to make us look weak, “he said.
He added: “We must show the world that if you imprison a British citizen on bogus charges, he will pay a heavy price because Britain is a major player on the world stage and intends to remain so.
“Allowing them to push us like this at the time of post-Brexit renewal sends the opposite signal.”
Chronology
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s Imprisonment in Iran
Arrest in Tehran
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is arrested at Imam Khomeini Airport as she tries to return to Britain after a vacation visiting her family with her daughter, Gabriella.
Launch campaign begins
Sentenced
Hunger strike
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s health is deteriorating after spending several days on a hunger strike to protest his imprisonment.
The appeal fails
Boris Johnson intervenes
Boris Johnson, then Foreign Secretary, tells a select parliamentary committee “When we look at what [she] she was doing, she was just teaching journalism to people. “Four days after her comments, Zaghari-Ratcliffe returns to court, where her statement is cited as evidence against her. Her employers, the Thomson Reuters Foundation, deny that she has Trained journalists, and her family maintain that she was in Iran on vacation. Johnson is finally forced to apologize for the “heartbreak and anguish” her comments cause in the family.
Health concerns
Her husband reveals that Zaghari-Ratcliffe fears for her health after lumps were found in her breasts that required an ultrasound, and that she was now “on the verge of a nervous breakdown.”
Hunt meets her husband
Temporary release
He is granted a temporary release of three days.
Hunger strike
Diplomatic protection
Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt takes the unusual step of granting him diplomatic protection, a move that elevates his case from consular matter to the level of a dispute between the two states.
Travel warning
The UK updates its travel recommendations for dual British-Iranian citizens, and for the first time advises against all travel to Iran. The council also urges Iranian citizens living in the UK to exercise caution if they decide to travel to Iran.
Hunger strike in London
Richard Ratcliffe joins his wife in a new hunger strike campaign. He fasts in front of the Iranian embassy in London as she begins a third hunger strike protest in prison.
Hunger strike ends
Zaghari-Ratcliffe ends her hunger strike with breakfast. Her husband also ends his strike in front of the embassy.
Transferred to the mental health ward
According to her husband, Zaghari-Ratcliffe was transferred from Evin prison to the mental ward of Imam Khomeini hospital, where the Iranian Revolutionary Guard has prevented her relatives from contacting her.
Daughter returns to London
Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s five-year-old daughter Gabriella, who has lived with her grandparents in Tehran and regularly visited her mother in prison for the past three years, returns to London to start school.
Temporary release
Amid the threat of the coronavirus pandemic, he is temporarily released from prison, but will be required to wear an ankle brace and not move more than 300 meters from his parents’ home.
New charges
Iranian state media reports that he will appear in court to face new and unspecified charges. Ultimately, a court appearance over the weekend on a new charge of propaganda against the state that could leave her incarcerated for another 10 years is postponed without notice, leading Zaghari-Ratcliffe to say, “People don’t You must underestimate the level of stress. Let me calm down. You don’t understand what it is like.
Return to prison threatened
Zaghari-Ratcliffe is told that she will be tried on new charges and that she will return to prison after the hearing.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe is serving house arrest after being released from prison in March due to the coronavirus pandemic.
His six-year-old daughter Gabriella appeared in a 10-minute video published by Amnesty International on December 21, in which she wrote Boris Johnson a Christmas card and asked him to take her mother home.
Titled Two Daughters, the video also featured 34-year-old Elika Ashoori, whose father, a 66-year-old retired engineer with dual citizenship, Anoosheh Ashoori, has been detained in Iran since August 2017.
Tehran has linked both cases to a 40-year-old £ 400 million debt the UK owes Iran.
On November 3, Foreign Minister James Cleverly told the Commons that the debt was not related to the imprisonment of Zaghari-Ratcliffe, adding that the government was “deeply concerned” about the new charges against the British citizen.
Shadow Foreign Secretary Lisa Nandy at the time called on the UK government to resolve the historic debt problem and called Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s treatment by Iranian officials “tantamount to mental torture.” .
She said: ‘Solving this problem, which has raged for decades where there is a clear legal obligation in the UK, where the Defense Secretary has described the UK’s behavior as’ non-British’ and ‘obfuscating’, has the perspective to put our relations with Iran in better conditions. “
Hunt wrote in the Times that sanctions on Iran should not prevent repayment of the debt, which he suggested could be paid in the form of drugs.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s original sentence will end on March 7, but she appeared in court in November on charges of spreading anti-regime propaganda.
Her husband, Richard Ratcliffe, called the charges “spurious” and said the case presented the same evidence that was used when she was convicted in 2016.
Ratcliffe also said that the release last month of a British-Australian academic by the Iranian authorities showed a “light at the end of the tunnel.”
