Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe (; ; born 26 December 1978) is an Iranian-British dual citizen who was detained in Iran from 3 April 2016 to 16 March 2022 as part of a long-running dispute between Britain and Iran. In early September 2016, she was sentenced to five years in prison after being found guilty of plotting to topple the Iranian government. While in prison, she went on at least three hunger strikes trying to persuade Iranian authorities to provide medical treatment for her health problems. She was temporarily released on 17 March 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic in Iran, but subject to electronic monitoring.
In October 2017, the prosecutor general of Tehran made a new claim that Zaghari-Ratcliffe was being held for running "a BBC Persian online journalism course which was aimed at recruiting and training people to spread propaganda against Iran". Zaghari-Ratcliffe has always denied the spying charges against her, and her husband maintains that his wife "was imprisoned as leverage for a debt owed by the UK over its failure to deliver tanks to Iran in 1979."
On 7 March 2021, her original sentence ended, but she was scheduled to face a second set of charges on 14 March. On 26 April, she was found guilty of propaganda activities against the government and sentenced to another year in prison. She appealed but on 16 October 2021, her appeal was rejected by the Iranian court. Zaghari-Ratcliffe was finally released on 16 March 2022 immediately after Britain repaid an outstanding debt of £393.8 million to Iran. She returned to the United Kingdom the next day.
Early life and education Nazanin Zaghari was born and brought up in Tehran and studied English literature at the University of Tehran, before becoming an English teacher. Following the 2003 Bam earthquake she worked as a translator in the relief effort for the Japan International Cooperation Agency. She later worked for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and then moved to the World Health Organization as a communications officer.
In 2007, Zaghari-Ratcliffe moved to the UK after receiving a scholarship to study for a Masters in Communication Management at London Metropolitan University.
Shortly after her arrival in the UK she met her future husband, Richard Ratcliffe, through mutual friends. The couple married in August 2009 in Winchester and their daughter was born in June 2014. Zaghari-Ratcliffe became a British citizen in 2013. Zaghari-Ratcliffe used to return to Iran from time to time enabling her parents to see her daughter. When travelling to Iran she would always do so on her Iranian passport, as required by Iranian law. Zaghari-Ratcliffe used her British passport for all other international travel.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe worked for the BBC World Service Trust from February 2009 to October 2010, then worked at the Thomson Reuters Foundation as a project coordinator before taking on the role of a project manager.
Arrest and trial On 17 March 2016, Zaghari-Ratcliffe travelled to visit her family for Nowruz (Iranian New Year) with her 22-month-old daughter. On 3 April 2016, members of Iran's Revolutionary Guard arrested her at the Imam Khomeini Airport as she and her daughter were about to board a flight back to the UK. Her daughter's British passport was confiscated during the arrest, but later returned, and she remained in Iran under the care of her maternal grandparents so she could visit her mother.
The reason for her arrest was unclear. Zaghari-Ratcliffe had worked for the BBC World Service Trust (now called BBC Media Action) between February 2009 and October 2010. This is an international charity that provided training courses to Iranian citizen journalists and bloggers in its Iran Media Development Project's ZigZag magazine and associated radio programme. Iran seemed to believe the BBC was a tool for British espionage and in 2014, several graduates were convicted and sentenced by Iran to up to 11 years in jail for their participation in these courses.
BBC Media Action described her role there as "junior and purely administrative". By the time of her arrest, Zaghari-Ratcliffe was working for the Thomson Reuters Foundation. CEO of the Thomson Reuters Foundation, Monique Villa, said “Nazanin has been working at the Thomson Reuters Foundation for the past four years as a project coordinator in charge of grants applications and training, and had no dealing with Iran in her professional capacity.”
In early September 2016, Zaghari-Ratcliffe was sentenced to five years in prison for allegedly plotting to overthrow the Iranian government. The prosecutor general of Tehran stated in October 2017 that she was imprisoned for running "...a BBC Persian online journalism course which was aimed at recruiting and training people to spread propaganda against Iran".
Imprisonment On 23 August 2018, Zaghari-Ratcliffe was released on furlough for three days, which is standard practice prior to lengthier releases. However, Zaghari-Ratcliffe suffered from panic attacks after returning to prison, and regretted having been given the temporary release. Her husband said the furlough was a "cruel game" subject to conditions including the monitoring of her movements.
In late September 2018, when questioned about the Zaghari-Ratcliffe case, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani acknowledged awareness of the case (though denying knowledge of its specifics), and noted that "new charges [had been] brought against her." Rouhani compared the imprisonment of foreigners in Iran to the imprisonment of Iranians in Western countries, saying that leaders on both sides were denying power over the decisions of their own judiciary, and that "we must all" exert "a constant, concerted effort... so... all prisoners must be free... but it must be a path that travels both ways."Rouhani, Hassan (President of Iran), with Christiane Amanpour: interview (video and transcript), 1 October 2018 (replay of excerpt of 30 September 2018 interview), Amanpour and Company, PBS-TV, retrieved 13 November 2021.
In March 2019, the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) granted Zaghari-Ratcliffe diplomatic protection, raising the status of her case from a consular matter to a dispute between the two governments. Iran argues the designation is contrary to international law, the Master Nationality Rule, with Iran's ambassador in London stating "Governments may only exercise such protection for own nationals, ... Iran does not recognise dual nationality".
On 11 October 2019, Zaghari-Ratcliffe's daughter returned to her father in the United Kingdom to start school.
In December 2019, the prosecutor general of Iran denied conditional release for Nazanin Zaghari, which had been requested by her lawyer.
In March 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in Iran – when Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei announced plans to pardon 10,000 prisoners and temporarily release 85,000 to fight a surge of COVID-19 infections in prisonsRichard Ratcliffe with Christiane Amanpour: "British-Iranian Woman Temporarily Released from Iranian Jail," 19 March 2020, Amanpour and Company, PBS-TV, retrieved 13 November 2021. – Zaghari-Ratcliffe was released on a temporary basis. Her husband reported that she had been ill for two weeks with COVID-19 symptoms but had not been tested and did not require hospitalization.
While on parole she lived at her parents' house in Tehran but was required to wear an electronic tag and remain within 300 metres of the house. She was able to make video calls for several hours a day to her husband and daughter. Her parole was later extended until 18 April. Her release was again delayed in April, to 20 May according to her husband. Her family said on 20 May that her release had been delayed indefinitely.
On 8 September 2020, Iranian state media said that Zaghari-Ratcliffe was facing new charges. On 13 September, her trial was postponed. In October it was scheduled for 2 November. Despite repeated requests, no British officials were allowed to observe it.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe's sentence ended on 7 March 2021. The day before, Nazanin's husband, Richard Ratcliffe, had expressed that he and his daughter were waiting "very anxiously" for the release. He also said that they were not sure if she'd be released, as "the arrangements haven't been clarified". She was freed as scheduled but with a new court case against her booked for 14 March. On that date she appeared on charges of propaganda against the regime and was told to expect a verdict within seven working days.
On 26 April 2021, she was found guilty of propaganda activities against the government, sentenced to one year in prison and banned from leaving Iran for a year. Her lawyer said that she had been accused of taking part in a demonstration in London 12 years before and giving an interview to the BBC Persian service.
Prisoners swap dispute On 24 April 2019, Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif suggested an official swap between Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Negar Ghodskani, an Iranian citizen being held in Australia on a US extradition warrant. Britain rejected a prisoner-swap proposal by Iran's foreign minister, calling it a "vile" diplomatic manoeuvre. An Iranian state TV report quoted an anonymous Iran official on 2 May 2021 as stating that the United Kingdom had agreed to settle its debt of £400 million in return for her release. The British government denied this the next day, saying the negotiations about the debt, accrued due to it not delivering tanks to Iran as agreed in a deal made in the 1970s, were separate from her case and still ongoing.
1971 arms deal dispute In February 2018, Richard Ratcliffe said he believed his wife's release was dependent on the interest on a £450 million debt the UK has owed to Iran since the 1970s for a cancelled arms deal. In October 2019, he repeated this with more detail, stating that a UK government agency was using "every legal roadblock to delay and minimise the payment".
In 1971, the Iranian government, then under the Shah of Iran, paid Britain for an order for more than 1,500 Chieftain tanks and other armoured vehicles as part of a £650 million deal. Following the fall of the Shah's regime in 1979, Britain cancelled the undelivered part of the order and the new Islamic regime asked for a partial refund on undelivered tanks. A legal dispute existed between Britain and Iran ever since. In May 2021, after his wife had her sentence extended yet again, Richard Ratcliffe authored a piece for Declassified UK in which he wrote that the "secretive, unaccountable" UK arms trade was a danger to Nazanin and British citizens everywhere.
In January 2016, the United States refunded Iran $400 million for undelivered military equipment which was associated with the release of four Iranian-Americans, including Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian, which could be viewed as a precedent for Zaghari-Ratcliffe's situation.
According to Zaghari-Ratcliffe, she was told by her military interrogators of the link between her detention and the disputed arms deal. This claim was denied by both the Iranian Foreign Ministry and the British Foreign Office, with the latter stating:
Richard Ratcliffe reaffirmed his belief that his wife was being used as a bargaining chip in the dispute over the unpaid IMS debt and talks over the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action nuclear enrichment deal with Iran. However, he believed recent reports on Iranian TV suggested the governments were in the middle of negotiations. On 2 May 2021, British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said Iran was using Zaghari-Ratcliffe in "a cat-and-mouse game", and her treatment "amounts to torture". The debt repayment deal failed, which Prime Minister Boris Johnson later explained as "difficult to settle and square away for all sorts of reasons to do with sanctions".