Status: 03/16/2022 5:10 p.m
For years, dual nationals Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anusch Ashoori were imprisoned in Iran. Now they were allowed to leave the country and return to Great Britain.
Two British-Iranian nationals have been released after years of imprisonment in Iran and have traveled back to the UK. Dual nationals arrested in Iran in 2016 and 2017, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori, are expected in the UK, UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said.
“Parallel” to the negotiations between London and Tehran over the releases, both sides had settled a decades-long dispute over a liability of £394 million, or around 470 million euros. Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori would be “reunited with their families and loved ones” upon arrival in the UK, Truss said.
Anusch Ashoori is free again.
Image: via REUTERS
Iranian authorities gave Zaghari-Ratcliffe her British passport back over the weekend, fueling hopes that her plight would end soon. Prime Minister Boris Johnson also confirmed on a trip to the Middle East that a negotiating team in Tehran was working on her release. He later tweeted that he was glad the “unfair arrest” of Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Aschoori was over.
MP Tulip Siddiq from Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s London home district of Hampstead wrote on Twitter that the 43-year-old British woman was at Tehran Airport. Siddiq also posted a photo of Zaghari-Ratcliffe smiling on a plane. “Nazanin is now on the air to escape six years of hell in Iran.”
Arrests during family visits
Zaghari-Ratcliffe was taken into custody at Tehran Airport in April 2016 after visiting her relatives in Iran. The British woman with Iranian roots then spent five years in prison. She was later found guilty of conspiring to overthrow the Iranian government. She herself, her supporters and human rights groups denied the allegations. After five years in prison, she was released to house arrest. At the time of her arrest she was working for the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Ashoori is a retired engineer. He was sentenced to at least 10 years in prison for spying for Israel while visiting his mother in Iran in 2017. The families of both dual nationals always argued that Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Ashoori were victims of political persecution. Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s husband, Richard, has repeatedly said his wife is a “hostage” in a dark political game. It is about the repayment of a debt from the time of the Shah of Persia.
Longstanding dispute about debts in the background
The semi-state news agency Fars previously indicated in a report that Zagharis-Ratcliffe’s release was imminent. The British government previously owed around £400 million to the leadership in Tehran. Before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi had paid the money for tanks that were never delivered. The long overdue debts have now been settled, it said.
Truss now said that the dispute over the repayment had been settled with the mediation of Oman. The money will be invested “exclusively for the purchase of humanitarian goods”. According to the Isna news agency, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said Tehran “received the millions a few days ago”. But it was “wrong” to establish a connection between the receipt of payment “and the release of these people”.
Truss said the London government would continue to work for the release of Morad Tahbaz, another Iranian with triple UK-US citizenship. For the time being, the status of a freelancer had been agreed for him.