British-Iranian aid worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe's 5-year sentence in spy case ends
Mar 07, 2021
London [UK], March 8 : Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian charity worker who was in an Iranian jail for almost five years for alleged sedition charges, has finally had her ankle monitor removed. She now faces another trial on separate charges.
According to CNN, she had been under house arrest for almost a year due to the coronavirus pandemic.
"Still trying to get a handle on what is going on -- but the news is mixed," Richard Ratcliffe, her husband, told CNN.
Though her ankle tag from the first case has been taken off, she has been summoned next week for the second case.
While welcoming the news of the removal of her ankle tag, UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said: "We welcome the removal of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe's ankle tag, but Iran's continued treatment of her is intolerable...She must be allowed to return to the UK as soon as possible to be reunited with her family."
Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a 41-year-old charity worker with the Thomson Reuters Foundation, was arrested at Tehran airport in April 2016 as she headed back to Britain with her daughter after a family visit. She was sentenced to five years in jail after being convicted of plotting to overthrow Iran's clerical establishment.
Her family and the Foundation, however, denied the charges.
In 2017, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who was then the Foreign Secretary, attracted criticism for appearing to jeopardise Zaghari-Ratcliffe's case when he suggested at a parliamentary hearing that she had been training journalists in Iran prior to her arrest.
He had later apologised for his comments.
CNN stated that Johnson's comments had appeared to lead to Zaghari-Ratcliffe being summoned to an unscheduled court hearing, at which his remarks were cited as proof that she had engaged in "propaganda against the regime."
