British-Iranian aid worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe freed in Iran but faces new court date

Our Foreign Staff
·3 min read
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe with her daughter Gabriella  - HANDOUT/Free Nazanin campaign/AFP via Getty Images
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe with her daughter Gabriella - HANDOUT/Free Nazanin campaign/AFP via Getty Images

Iran has released British-Iranian aid worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, her lawyer Hojjat Kermani told Iranian website Emtedad on Sunday, after her five-year prison sentence for plotting to overthrow the clerical establishment came to an end.

"She was pardoned by Iran's Supreme Leader last year, but spent the last year of her term under house arrest with electronic shackles tied to her feet. Now they're cast off," Mr Kermani told the website. "She has been freed."

Iran's judiciary officials have yet to comment about the release.

It was not immediately clear whether she was allowed to leave Iran. Mr Kermani was quoted as saying that "a hearing for Zaghari's second case has been scheduled at branch 15 of the Revolutionary Court of Tehran," according to the website. State TV later quoted him as saying he had "no information about her travel ban."

Her MP, Tulip Siddiq, also said that Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe has been summoned back to court next Sunday.

Her husband Richard Ratcliffe, who has campaigned tirelessly for her release, said his wife was "pleased" her ankle tag had been removed but that the news from Iran was "mixed" given her upcoming court appearance.

Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said: “We welcome the removal of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s ankle tag, but Iran continues to put her and her family through a cruel and an intolerable ordeal.

“She must be released permanently so she can return to her family in the UK. We will continue to do all we can to achieve this.

“We have relayed to the Iranian authorities in the strongest possible terms that her continued confinement is unacceptable.”

Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a project manager with the Thomson Reuters Foundation, was arrested at a Tehran airport in April 2016 as she prepared to head back to Britain with her daughter after a family visit.

She was later sentenced to five years in jail after being convicted of plotting to overthrow Iran's clerical establishment. Her family and the foundation, a charity that operates independently of media firm Thomson Reuters and its news subsidiary Reuters, deny the charge.

She was released from jail in March last year and put under house arrest in Tehran in response to concerns about the spread of COVID-19 in Iran's prisons, but her movements were restricted and she was barred from leaving the country.

This is a breaking story, more to follow.

Recommended Stories

  • British-Iranian woman ends 5-year sentence, but not free yet

    A British-Iranian woman held in an Iranian prison for five years on widely refuted spying charges ended her sentence on Sunday, her lawyer said, although she faces a new trial and cannot yet return home to London. The twists and turns of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe's years-long case have sparked international outrage and strained already fraught diplomatic ties between Britain and Iran. Although Zaghari-Ratcliffe completed her full sentence and was allowed to remove her ankle monitor and leave house arrest, her future remains uncertain amid a long-running debt dispute between Britain and Iran and rising regional tensions.

  • Iran releases British-Iranian aid worker Zaghari-Ratcliffe from house arrest but court summons looms

    Iran has released British-Iranian aid worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe from house arrest at the end of her five-year prison sentence, but she has been summoned to court again on another charge, her lawyer said on Sunday. Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a project manager with the Thomson Reuters Foundation, was arrested at a Tehran airport in April 2016 and later convicted of plotting to overthrow the clerical establishment. Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who served out most of her sentence in Tehran's Evin prison, was released last March during the coronavirus pandemic and kept under house arrest, but her movements were restricted and she was barred from leaving the country.

  • ‘Nazanin should have been home today – this was our worst case scenario’

    For the last six weeks, Gabriella Ratcliffe has been counting down the days on her calendar in eager anticipation of March 7 – the official end of her mother’s jail sentence after five years of imprisonment in Iran, for spying charges both she and the British Government deny. But to the utter heartbreak of her family, today, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is still under house arrest in Tehran, 3,000 miles away from her husband and six-year-old daughter. “Gabriella wanted to do a calendar,” explains her father Richard, 45, an accountant. “Bless her, she’s been counting down for days, planning what we’ll do when Nazanin is back. In the last few days... well, it’s all become more hypothetical than tangible. I wondered at the time whether this would come back to haunt us. And if I’m honest, it now looks like it might.” Nazanin, a dual British and Iranian citizen, was arrested back in March 2016 at Tehran airport on her way back home to London with Gabriella, after taking her daughter on holiday to visit family. She was locked up in Iran’s notorious Evin prison until last year, when she was released on furlough to her parents’ home in Tehran with an ankle tag. The 42-year-old, who worked as a project manager for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, hasn’t seen her husband since she left their North London home for that two-week holiday over five years ago, and last saw her daughter in October 2019 when Gabriella left her grandparents’ home in Tehran to come back to England and be reunited with Richard. “It was always outrageous that Nazanin was being imprisoned, whether it was right at the beginning or months and then years in,” says Richard, who believes his wife is being held as a bargaining chip over a £400 million arms debt owed by Britain to Iran, dating back to 1979. “But throughout it all I’ve always thought the worst case scenario would be waiting till the end of her sentence. It never occurred to me we’d go past the end of her sentence. For it to seem like it could just drift past it is really unsettling. It leaves us all asking: when will this end? What’s going on here?”

  • Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe: It's safer not to dream of release, says husband

    The husband of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the British-Iranian woman who is detained in Iran, said the family does not know if she will be freed today, when her sentence is due to end. British-Iranian dual national has been held in Iran since 2016, when she was sentenced to five years in prison over allegations, which she denies, of plotting to overthrow the Iranian government.

  • Rouhani: Iran ready to take steps when US lifts sanctions

    Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said Sunday his country was prepared to take steps to live up to measures in the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers as soon as the United States lifts economic sanctions on Iran. In a meeting with Irish Minister of Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney, Rouhani said: “Iran is ready to immediately take compensatory measures based on the nuclear deal and fulfill its commitments just after the U.S. illegal sanctions are lifted and it abandons its policy of threats and pressure.”

  • Todd Bowles: "We stunk it up as coach...players"

    Todd Bowles, Jamal Adams and other Jets players voice their disappointment after their blowout loss to the Buffalo Bill

  • From vote to virus, misinformation campaign targets Latinos

    Tom Perez was a guest on a Spanish-language talk radio show in Las Vegas last year when a caller launched into baseless complaints about both parties, urging Latino listeners to not cast votes at all. Perez, then chairman of the Democratic Party, recognized many of the claims as talking points for #WalkAway, a group promoted by a conservative activist, Brandon Straka, who was later arrested for participating in the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. In the run-up to the November election, that call was part of a broader, largely undetected movement to depress turnout and spread disinformation about Democrat Joe Biden among Latinos, promoted on social media and often fueled by automated accounts.

  • Pope Francis meets Iraq's top Shi'ite cleric

    Francis's meeting in the holy southern city of Najaf, during a whirlwind and risky tour of Iraq, marked the first time a pope has met with such a senior Shi'ite cleric.Sistani is one of the most important figures in Shi'ite Islam, both within Iraq and beyond. He wields enormous influence over politics. His edicts sent Iraqis to free polls for the first time in 2005, rallied hundreds of thousands of men to fight against Islamic State in 2014 and toppled an Iraqi government under pressure from mass demonstrations in 2019.Sistani, 90, rarely takes meetings, and has refused talks with Iraq's current and former prime ministers, according to officials close to him. Sistani agreed to meet the pope on condition that no Iraqi officials would be present, said a source in the president's office.The meeting with Francis took place at Sistani's humble home, which he has rented for decades, located along a narrow alleyway in Najaf.

  • After 70 years, Pentagon identifies remains of Korean War chaplain who received Medal of Honor

    Father Emil Kapaun was awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously and is being considered for sainthood by the Roman Catholic Church.

  • 'Coronavirus can't kill me now'; Africans cheer rollout of COVAX vaccinations

    Nigeria, Kenya and Rwanda started inoculating frontline healthcare workers and vulnerable citizens against COVID-19 on Friday as Africa, the world's poorest continent and home to 1.3 billion people, stepped up its vaccination campaigns. While some wealthy Western nations have already inoculated millions of people, many African states have struggled to secure doses and have yet to administer a single shot. But the global vaccine-sharing COVAX facility, co-led by the World Health Organization (WHO), the GAVI vaccine alliance and others, has begun to bear fruit in nations from Ghana to Rwanda.

  • New protests in Spain over the jailing of rapper's backers

    Several hundred protesters marched Saturday in Spain's northeastern city of Barcelona against the authorities' crackdown following a violent outcry over the imprisonment of Pablo Hasél, an anti-establishment artist. Saturday's march took place amid a heavy police presence, winding through several avenues of the Catalan regional capital. The rapper is serving nine months for inciting terrorism — he has praised two now-defunct armed groups responsible for killing over 900 people in Spain — and for refusing to pay a fine for insulting Spain’s former king.

  • Minnesota court rules judge must reconsider third-degree murder charge in George Floyd case

    The Minnesota Court of Appeals ruled on Friday that a lower court must reconsider a third-degree murder charge against Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer who is due to go on trial next week for the death of George Floyd last May. Chauvin's trial was due to begin with jury selection in Minneapolis on Monday but that could be delayed as Judge Peter Cahill of the Hennepin County district court must now weigh again reinstating the third-degree murder charge. Chauvin already faces a more serious charge of second-degree murder, which carries a sentence of up to 40 years in prison, as well as a charge of second-degree manslaughter.

  • India sets up holding center for Rohingya in Kashmir

    Authorities in Indian-controlled Kashmir have sent at least 168 Rohingya refugees to a holding center, police said Sunday, in a process that they say is for the deportation of thousands of the refugees living in the region. The move began Saturday following a directive from the region’s home department to identify Rohingya living in the southern city of Jammu, said Inspector-General Mukesh Singh. “All of them are illegally living here and we have begun identifying them,” Singh said.

  • 2 teen struck by hit-and-run driver while fixing flat tire in Raleigh

    A 17-year-old girl has died after being struck along Old Milburnie Road Friday night, according to the Highway Patrol. The driver fled the scene.

  • Bryant trade to Mets or Yanks?

    SNY's Jim Duquette on what he thinks it would take for the Mets or Yankees to acquire Cubs Kris Bryant in a trade on Baseball Night in NY

  • The inside story of the rift between Harry and Meghan and The Firm

    There was something distinctly familiar about the Oprah Winfrey teaser in which Prince Harry declared: "My biggest concern was history repeating itself." The words, due to be aired during the Duke and Duchess of Sussexes' tell-all interview on Sunday night, bore an uncanny resemblance to the statement released by Harry's communications secretary, Jason Knauf, in November 2016 after the Sunday Express had revealed that the Prince was dating the American actress. Confirming that "his girlfriend Meghan Markle" had been "subject to a wave of abuse and harassment", the statement criticised the "racial undertones" of newspaper coverage, adding: "Prince Harry is worried about Ms Markle's safety and is deeply disappointed that he has not been able to protect her. This is not a game – it is her life and his." The unprecedented salvo created two important narratives around the former Suits star – it formally confirmed her status as the woman in Harry's life but also positioned her, in the eyes of the palace and the public, as the victim at the heart of a media "storm". As the statement suggested, a line had been "crossed".

  • Best Buy is having a 3-day sale of epic proportions—here's all the best deals

    Best Buy's is having an enormous three-day sale on tons of tech, with deals on laptops, TVs, tablets, games and more—shop our top picks.

  • Trump said he would travel the 5,000 miles from Mar-a-Lago to Alaska to bury the political career of GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski in revenge for her impeachment vote

    Trump promised to back any 2022 challenger to the senator. Murkowski called on him to resign after the January 6 Capitol riot.

  • Rights groups call for investigation into killings of Philippine activists

    Human rights groups called on the Philippine government to investigate what they said was the use of "lethal force" during police raids on Sunday that left at least nine activists dead. The raids in four provinces south of Manila resulted in the death of an environmental activist as well as a coordinator of left-wing group Bagong Alyansang Makabayan, among others, and resulted in the arrest of four others, activist groups said. "These raids appear to be part of a coordinated plan by the authorities to raid, arrest, and even kill activists in their homes and offices," Human Rights Watch Deputy Asia Director Phil Robertson said in a statement.

  • Oprah Winfrey and Stedman Graham have been together for nearly 35 years. Here's a timeline of their relationship.

    Winfrey has said if she'd married Graham, their relationship would not have lasted.