The British-Iranian citizen Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, detained in Iran since 2016 on alleged espionage charges, is now at Tehran airport “on her way home” in the United Kingdom, British MP Tulip Siddiq revealed on Twitter on Wednesday.
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The MP for the London constituency of Hampstead and Kilburnwhere Zahari-Ratcliffe resided, already reported Tuesday in another tweet that the Iranian authorities had returned the British passport to the woman and that a negotiating team from the London government was in Iran.
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“Nazanin is at the airport in Tehran and on his way home. I got into politics to change things and right now I feel that I have achieved it, “said the deputy in her message.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s sister-in-law, Rebecca Ratcliffe, told the BBCthat Nazanin had been taken to an Iranian airport waiting room with her parents, who had not been allowed to enter the room as the woman was “still under Iranian control at the airport”.
Rebecca Ratcliffe revealed that in the same waiting room where her sister-in-law is, there is also the British-Iranian businessman Anoosheh Ashoori, arrested in 2017 and sentenced to ten years in prison also for espionage charges, and who has also been allowed leave that country.
Nazanin, whose case has pitted the governments in London and Tehran, was arrested in Iran in 2016 accused of having conspired to overthrow the Government, charges that she has always denied.
After her arrest in 2016 during a family visit in Tehran, the 43-year-old woman was sentenced to five years in prison for crimes against state security. The last year she spent under house arrest, controlled electronically due to the pandemic.
At the end of that sentence, Nazanin faced a new trial in which she was sentenced on April 26, 2021 to another year in prison for another alleged crime of propaganda.
The British Foreign Office –-Foreign Office— has not, for the time being, commented on this news, although Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who is currently on a trip to Saudi Arabia, had indicated that the negotiations in this case were “progressing”, without disclosing details.
As indicated yesterday by the Thomson Reuters foundation, for which Zaghari-Ratcliffe worked before being arrested, when asked about the possibility of a prompt release of the woman, her lawyer, Hojjat Kermani, said he hoped to have “good news soon” .
It has been speculated that Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s arrest was linked to an outstanding debt the UK has owed Iran for more than forty years, when Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi bought 1,500 tanks worth £400m that he never they were delivered.
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