DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) – A trial to present new charges against a British-Iranian woman detained in Iran for five years met on Sunday, her supporters said, sparking uncertainty about her future after her release from prison.
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is appearing in court on charges of ‘spreading propaganda against the regime’, says Richard Ratcliffe, who is openly campaigning for his wife’s release.
Iranian authorities instituted the new act months ago, but adjourned the trial until Zaghari-Ratcliffe completed her five-year sentence on wide-ranging espionage charges last week. A verdict was expected within days, he added.
“The charges are not particularly relevant as the point of reviving the case last week was simply to detain Nazanin for leverage as the negotiations with the UK intensified,” Ratcliffe said.
The latest twist in the Zaghari-Ratcliffe case comes as Britain and Iran negotiate a long-running dispute over a £ 400m ($ 530m) debt that London owes to Tehran. Before the Islamic Revolution in 1979, the late Iranian Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi paid the amount for main tanks that were never delivered.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe, 42, was sentenced to five years in prison after pleading guilty to plotting to overthrow the Iranian government, a charge she, her supporters and rights groups deny. While working for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charity arm of the news agency, she was arrested at Tehran Airport in April 2016 when she returned to Britain.
Over the years, Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s detention has sparked international outrage over Iran’s human rights record and strained ties between Britain and Iran. Now, a week after she was allowed to remove her single monitor and leave house arrest, she remains stuck and unable to fly home to her family in London. Authorities released Zaghari-Ratcliffe from prison in March last year due to the rising coronavirus pandemic, and she has since been detained at her parents’ home in Tehran.
Ratcliffe says Sunday morning’s trial was brief, noting that his wife appeared before a branch of the country’s revolutionary court in Tehran, where she was first jailed in 2017 on dark espionage charges. and heard other politically-charged cases, ‘was calm and polite,’ he said.
British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab has denounced the new case against Zaghari-Ratcliffe as’ completely arbitrary ‘, adding that’ she should be allowed to return to her family in the UK without delay. . ‘
Iranian state-run media did not immediately report the trial. But the country’s pro-reform Shargh said daily on his Telegram news channel that the final trial on propaganda charges had been held “in full peace” in Tehran.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe was allowed to make a personal statement in which she denied the allegations of spreading propaganda and requested a fair trial, Ratcliffe added.
Rights groups accuse Iran of holding dual citizens as negotiators for money or influence in negotiations with the West, something Tehran denies. Iran does not recognize dual nationalities, so detainees like Zaghari-Ratcliffe cannot receive consular assistance. A UN panel has criticized what it describes as “an emerging pattern that includes the arbitrary deprivation of dual citizenship” in Iran.
Authorities in London and Tehran deny that Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s case is related to the refund for the delivery of tanks. But in a prisoner exchange that freed four U.S. citizens in 2016, the U.S. paid a similar amount to Iran the same day of their release.
In a call last week with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he stressed that Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s “continued incarceration is still unacceptable.” In reading Iran’s of the same phone call, no mention is made of the case of Zaghari-Ratcliffe, but claims that Johnson Rouhani stressed ‘the need to repay the country’s debt to Iran’.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s case also highlighted the dangers facing inmates in the overcrowded prisons in Iran. The United Nations has reported that Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s treatment, including the denial of medical care, could amount to torture. Lumps in her breasts, as well as a painful neurological condition, did not treat.
REDRESS, a London human rights organization that helped campaign for the release of Zaghari-Ratcliffe, announced last week that it had commissioned an independent evaluation of her physical and psychological condition and found evidence of torture and ill-treatment, of which the consequences continue to plague her. , it said.
Although Sunday’s trial last promised, the duration of Zaghari – Ratcliffe’s detention is unclear.
“I hope it’s all done. I hope I will not see everyone again and that this is the end, “Zaghari-Ratcliffe said in a statement after the trial. All we can do is wait. “
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Associated Press author Amir Vahdat in Tehran, Iran, contributed to this report.