On October 16, Zaghari-Ratcliffe lost an appeal to overturn a conviction of “spreading propaganda.” This is her second conviction in Iran and means she faces the prospect of returning to prison and not seeing her husband and young daughter until 2023.
On Sunday, her husband Richard Ratcliffe began a hunger strike, camping outside the UK Foreign Office in London. He told Sky News that he had lost faith in the government’s “broken” strategy, and lamented its inaction and failure to bring his wife home.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe was arrested in 2016 after travelling to Tehran with her then two-year old daughter, Gabriella, to visit her parents. The 43-year-old dual nationality project manager for the philanthropic arm of the Thomson Reuters Foundation was sentenced to five years in jail on espionage charges.
She was released in March of this year, but a month later was found guilty of “spreading propaganda against the system” for having participated in a protest outside the Iranian Embassy in London in 2009. She was sentenced to a year in jail and banned from traveling.
Two years ago, Ratcliffe went on hunger strike for fifteen days in solidarity with his wife in front of the Iranian Embassy, contributing to the return of their now seven-year-old daughter, Gabriella, who has not seen Zaghari-Ratcliffe since.
Ratcliffe claims his wife has been imprisoned as leverage for a £400 million debt that the United Kingdom owes Iran, and that her case is not a legal issue, but a political game. Iran is accused of jailing dual nationals and using them as bargaining chips in its foreign relations.
On a handwritten placard outside the Foreign Office, Ratcliffe’s demands are set out: acknowledge Zaghari-Ratcliffe and others as hostages; punish the perpetrators; keep the promise to settle the debt; and commit to end state hostage taking in nuclear deal negotiations.
Punishing the perpetrators, Ratcliffe suggests, could be achieved through individual Magnitsky sanctions, or taking Iran to court, something he has been pushing the UK government to consider, to little effect.
According to Ratcliffe, the government has linked his wife’s fate to the revival of the nuclear accord and improved US-Iran relations: “This summer suddenly the government started suggesting we liaise with the junior minister rather than the new Foreign Secretary…. It seemed like a policy of managed waiting - and controlling the optics around the fallout coming our way.”
In June, Iran suspended talks aimed at reviving the US-Iran nuclear deal to allow for a transfer of power. The new government in Iran is now under increasing diplomatic pressure to get back to the negotiating table, with the US keen to rein in Tehran's expanded nuclear activities and Iran pushing for the lifting of US sanctions.
In a debate on Iran last week, Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s member of parliament, Tulip Siddiq, urged the UK government to call out Iran’s hostage taking, punish the perpetrators, and take much stronger action to free Zaghari-Ratcliffe.
British authorities say that they are doing all they can to help.
In response to the rejected appeal, British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss commented, “Iran’s decision to proceed with these baseless charges against Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is an appalling continuation of the cruel ordeal she is going through. We are doing all we can to help Nazanin get home to her young daughter and family and I will continue to press Iran on this point.”
According to Amnesty International UK, “Nazanin continues to be used as a bargaining chip at the hands of an authority who has played cruel political games with her life.”
By Monday, over 3.6 million people had signed an online petition calling for Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s release.
Updated at 2:46 pm
