The story so far: On March 17, the United Kingdom’s Foreign Secretary, Liz Truss, announced that British-Iranian citizen Nazanin Zaghari Ratcliffe had finally returned to the country, after almost six years of detention in Iran. Ms. Truss also announced that two other citizens — Anoosheh Ashoori and Morad Tahbaz had been released by the Iranian government. However, only one — Mr. Ashoori — could return to the UK.
Who is Nazanin Ratcliffe?
Nazanin Zaghari Ratcliffe, 43, is a dual citizen of Iran and the United Kingdom. Born in the Iranian capital Tehran, she studied English literature and went on to become an English teacher.
In 2003, the massive earthquake in Iran prompted her turn toward aid-work. She joined the Japanese International Cooperation Agency as a relief worker. Later, she worked with the International Federation of Red Cross, the Red Crescent Societies, and the World Health Organization, where she assumed the position of a communications officer.
In 2007, she moved to the UK on a scholarship at the London Metropolitan University to study communications management. She married Richard Ratcliffe in 2009.
In 2011, she started working with the Thomson Reuters Foundation (THF), an organisation advocating for human rights and freedom of speech and expression, first as a project worker and then a project manager. Prior to joining THF, she also worked with BBC Media Action, an international development charity.
In 2014, her daughter Gabriella was born, after which Ms. Ratcliffe would visit her family in Iran more often — twice a year, as per her husband, Mr. Ratcliffe.
Why was she arrested?
In March 2016, Ms. Ratcliffe had flown to Iran with her daughter Gabriella, who was almost two years old at the time, to celebrate the Iranian New Year with her family. In April, when she was at the Imam Khomeini Airport to return to the UK, members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard arrested her, saying that she was behind a "foreign-linked hostile network".
Both THF and BBC Media Action said that she was on a holiday in Iran and not working for the duration of her visit.
She was subsequently subjected to two months of rigorous interrogation and in September 2016 sentenced to five years in prison by the Iran Revolutionary Court, which accused her of plotting to overthrow the Iranian government.
However, the official charges and evidence against her were never made public. She has always denied the charges against her. Her daughter Gabriella, who was living with her grandparents in Tehran after Ms. Ratcliffe’s arrest, was returned to her father in the UK in 2019.
The aid-worker spent four years of her sentence at the Evin prison in Tehran. Of this, the first nine months were spent in solitary confinement, according to The Guardian. Her family had alleged that she was subjected to mental and physical torture in prison. The last year of her sentence was spent in house arrest in her parents’ home in Iran, as prisoners were released on parole owing to the Coronavirus pandemic.
As her sentence expired in 2021, in April of the same year she was charged with spreading “propaganda” against the Iranian government, sentenced to another year in prison and handed a one-year travel ban by the court. Her lawyer, Hojjat Kermani, had said that Ms. Ratcliffe was charged for participating in a demonstration in London outside the Iranian embassy 12 years ago, aside from giving an interview to the BBC Persian service.
British Human Rights organisation Amnesty International had called her trial “grossly unfair” and her imprisonment unjust and arbitrary. During her time in prison, Ms. Radcliffe went on two hunger strikes in 2019. She first started a three-day strike for being denied essential medical treatment and then undertook a 15-day hunger strike for her unconditional release.
Two British administrations, through their respective terms, made diplomatic efforts at bringing her back to the country. The British Embassy could not represent her in court, as Iran does not recognise dual citizenship. In 2018, former Foreign Secretary of the UK, Jeremy Hunt had said after a meeting with his Iranian counterpart Javad Zarif, that it was "not acceptable to detain innocent people arbitrarily at the cost of enormous human anguish". The then Prime Minister of the UK, Theresa May, had met Iranian president Hassan Rouhani for talks at the United Nations in 2018, and conveyed "serious concerns" about Ms. Zaghari-Ratcliffe's imprisonment, calling for her release.
Ms. Ratcliffe’s detention had also become a foreign policy issue for the current Boris Johnson administration, which was criticised for impeding the progress of the release efforts. Before becoming the Prime Minister, when Mr. Johnson was serving as the British Foreign Secretary, and he had said in a 2017 statement condemning Ms. Ratcliffe’s imprisonment that she was “simply teaching people journalism'' in Iran. This statement, despite being retracted by him later, was used as proof in the Iranian court that she was engaging in propaganda activities.
How is the UK’s £400 million debt to Iran linked to the incident?
Ms. Ratcliffe’s family, especially her husband, frequently said during her imprisonment that she was being used as a “political pawn”, alleging that she was being held in Tehran because the British government had not repaid an age-old £400 million defence debt to the Iranian government.
In the 1970s, before the Iranian revolution, the Shah of Iran, who was an ally of the UK, had ordered 1,500 Chieftain tanks and over 200 armoured vehicles, making an upfront payment to the UK. However, only a fraction of the defence equipment was delivered to Iran before the Shah was ousted, and the remaining principal amount was not repaid by the British.
According to Mr. Ratcliffe, his wife had been told by the captors that her arrest was connected to the UK not paying back the debt.
While both Iranian and British governments denied that the two events were connected, former British Foreign Secretary Mr. Hunt had said in 2021 that Iran was linking the debt to Ms. Ratcliffe’s case.
"I think they [Iran] are trying to use this as leverage to settle the historic debt for the Chieftain tanks and that's what they want settled. We obviously reject any linkage because we don't want to encourage hostage diplomacy and we want to follow the legal processes,’ he had said.
Political observers say the linkage was further strengthened owing to a statement made by the current Foriegn Secretary of the UK, Liz Truss, at the time of Ms. Ratcliffe’s release.
Incidentally, on March 16, the day of the aid-worker’s release, Ms. Truss had announced that after "highly complex" negotiations, the UK had found a way to clear the £393.8 million debt with Iran, with existing sanctions against Iran, anti-terror financing rules and anti-money laundering rules in place. She added that Iran would only be allowed to use the funds for humanitarian work.
Who are Anoosheh Ashoori and Morad Tahbaz?
Simultaneously with Ms. Ratcliffe, two other citizens were also released by Iranian authorities.
Anoosheh Ashoori, 67, a British-Iranian businessman, who had earned his educational qualifications and expanded his business in the UK, lived in Iran between 1982 and 2005.
In 2017, when he travelled to Iran to meet his mother, he was arrested by the authorities and in 2019, sentenced to 12 years in prison. Of this, 10 years were prescribed for charges of “spying for Israel’s Mossad” and two years for “acquiring illegitimate wealth”. Mr. Ashoori too, has always denied the accusations against him.
Mr. Ashoori also went on a hunger strike in the Evin Prison in Tehran for 17 days. In 2020, his wife, Sherry Izadi had said that he had attempted suicide twice in prison. Amnesty International UK has alleged that he was tortured and illegally made to sign confessions.
Mr. Ashoori was released on March 16 and reached the UK along with Ms. Ratcliffe.
A third prisoner, British-Iranian-American citizen Morad Tahbaz was also released from prison simultaneously, but could not come back to the UK as Iran intends to hold separate negotiations with America due to his US citizenship.
Mr. Tahbaz, a businessman and conservationist, had co-founded the wildlife conservation group Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation (PWHF). In 2018, he was arrested in Iran and accused of spying, after he and his group were “tracking” endangered species using cameras. The group was researching endangered animals such as the Asiatic cheetah in Iran.
Tehran said that Mr. Tahbaz and his group were gathering classified information under the guise of scientific and environmental projects. In late 2019, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison for having “contacts with the US enemy government”.
Amnesty International has described him as a “prisoner of conscience” and said that there was evidence that he was tortured in confinement.
