Boris Johnson made only “placebo promises” to free Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and is responsible for putting more British-Iranian dual nationals in the jails in Iran, her husband, Richard Ratcliffe, claims in a private letter to the prime minister.
Ratcliffe sent the letter 100 days ago, seeking a meeting alongside his daughter, Gabriella, to discuss his wife’s three-and-a-half-year imprisonment.
He received nothing more than an acknowledgement from Downing Street, and has now released its content.
In the letter, Johnson and his allies are accused of trying to defend his own political reputation “by muddying the waters around his wife’s case. The deflections informed months of propaganda, broadcast on Iranian TV for Nazanin to see from the walls of her cell.”
Ratcliffe demands to know why, as foreign secretary, Johnson did not follow through on a promise briefed to the rightwing press in 2017 that he would find a way to repay the £400m debt that the UK government acknowledges it owes from an arms deal struck with Iran in 1975. The repayment is widely seen as the single biggest cause of Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s prolonged imprisonment.
ProfileWho is Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe?
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Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is an Iranian-British dual national who has been jailed in Iran since April 2016. She has been accused of attempting to orchestrate a “soft overthrow” of the Islamic Republic. She and her three-year-old daughter, Gabriella, were about to return to the UK from Iran after a family visit when she was arrested. Since then, she has spent most of her time in Evin prison in Tehran, separated from her daughter.
In January 2019 she went on hunger strike for three days in protest against being denied medical care in Tehran’s Evin prison. In March, the UK Foreign Office granted her diplomatic protection, a step that raised her case from a consular matter to the level of a dispute between the two states.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe worked for BBC Media Action between February 2009 and October 2010 before moving to Thomson Reuters Foundation, the news agency’s charitable arm, as a project manager. Her family has always said that she was in Iran on holiday.
Ratcliffe wrote: “It remains unclear why you did not keep your word when foreign secretary, or why you briefed the newspapers if you had no intention of acting. Given the events subsequently, it remains unclear why you are yet to act on your promise now with the authority of a PM, or at least to meet and explain. The word of a foreign secretary cannot be easily undone, especially when [you] become PM.
“I told the FCO [Foreign and Commonwealth Office] privately that I thought your actions directly led to the imprisonment of other British Iranians, that there are people in prison now who would not be there if you had not made such promises and failed to keep them.”
“Of course, politics is full of placebo promises. But promises made lightly by politicians can still weigh heavy on the shoulders of others,” Ratcliffe continued.
“Since we last met, Nazanin has been on two hunger strikes and has been admitted to a psychiatric hospital in chains. That second court case against her has been revived. She is explicitly linked to the UK’s debt case, even by the Iranian foreign minister, [Mohammad] Javad Zarif, at the UN a few weeks ago.
“Similarly, other British Iranians have been arrested and sentenced, particularly in spring 2018 and again this summer. Developments in their cases have also been aligned to the UK’s debt court process and its continued stalemate. The UK now has more prisoners held in Evin prison than any of its allies.”
In the Tory leadership debates, Johnson said his mistake, in telling MPs that Zaghari-Ratcliffe had been training journalists in Tehran in 2017, had had no consequences, Ratcliffe wrote. “Plainly, that was false. Your allies went further on the airwaves, claiming that those who sought to blame you were apologists for the Iranian regime.
“Sleeping hungry on the street, I took issue with your refusal to accept your share of responsibility for Nazanin’s suffering.
“Oddly you are yet to correct your comments in Hansard, despite the comments being rolled out by Iran and used against Nazanin even now. At the time, we saw your cabinet allies being sent out onto the airwaves to dispute the slip’s severity, to muddy the waters around Nazanin’s case. I had to ask the government to remind the cabinet that you all knew she was just a mum on holiday being framed.”
TimelineImprisonment of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe in Iran
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Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is arrested at Imam Khomeini airport as she is trying to return to Britain after a holiday visiting family with her daughter, Gabriella.
Her husband, Richard Ratcliffe, delivers a letter to David Cameron in 10 Downing Street demanding that the government do more for her release.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe is sentenced to five years in jail. Her husband says the exact charges are still being kept a secret.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe's health deteriorates after she spends several days on hunger strike in protest at her imprisonment.
The foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, tells a parliamentary select committee: "When we look at what [she] was doing, she was simply teaching people journalism." Four days after his comments, Zaghari-Ratcliffe is returned to court where Johnson's statement is cited in evidence against her. Her employer, the Thomson Reuters Foundation, denies she has ever trained journalists, and her family maintain she was in Iran on holiday. Johnson is eventually forced to apologise for the "distress and anguish" his comments caused the family.
Richard Ratcliffe reveals that his wife has fears for her health after lumps were found in her breasts that required an ultrasound scan. He says she is “on the verge of a nervous breakdown”.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe again goes on hunger strike, this time in protest at the withdrawal of her medical care.
Jeremy Hunt, now the foreign secretary, takes the unusual step of granting her diplomatic protection – a move that raises her case from a consular matter to the level of a dispute between the two states.
Richard Ratcliffe joins his wife in a new hunger strike campaign. He fasts outside the Iranian embassy in London as she begins a third hunger strike in prison.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe's daughter, Gabriella, who has lived with her grandparents in Tehran and regularly visited her mother in jail over the last three years, returns to London to start school.
Amid the threat of the coronavirus pandemic, Zaghari-Ratcliffe is temporarily released from prison, but she is required to wear an ankle brace and not move more than 300 metres from her parents’ home.
Iranian state media report that she will appear in court to face new and unspecified charges. In the end, a weekend court appearance on a new charge of waging propaganda against the state, which could leave her incarcerated for another 10 years, is postponed without warning. Zaghari-Ratcliffe says: "People should not underestimate the level of stress. People tell me to calm down. You don’t understand what it is like. Nothing is calm."
Zaghari-Ratcliffe faces a second set of charges in Iran’s revolutionary court. She is freed from house arrest at the end of her five-year prison sentence, but because she has been summoned to court again on the other charge, she has not been allowed to leave the country to return to her family.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe is sentenced to another year in prison after being found guilty of spreading "propaganda against the system" for participating in a protest in front of the Iranian embassy in London in 2009.
He said Johnson told him after his visit to Tehran in December 2017 that his campaigning was damaging his wife’s case and he should be quiet for a few months.
Ratcliffe also accused some ministers of highlighting Nazanin’s status as a two-tier citizen in an attempt to show that the government owed them less responsibility to protect.
“By meeting, I would like you to affirm personally Nazanin’s importance and innocence, and your commitment to bringing Nazanin home. After the prevarications last time round, and especially the aloofness since, this has come under question. It is an important signal for us, for Iran, even for those of your supporters who periodically troll us. Nazanin matters still. Your word is your bond,” he wrote.
“Our story defines what a British passport is worth on your watch. The job of a PM is not just to make headlines, but in the end to make a difference. That starts with protecting citizens at their most vulnerable, home and abroad. Flowery promises do not keep people safe. In fact, undelivered they can have the opposite effect. Know that your actions cemented Nazanin’s place.
“Nazanin says how she no longer wants to live through what they are doing to her. Even if she knows her family is waiting, her ‘destiny does not allow’. Those in power do not care enough to solve it, and she cannot keep going like this. She has lost hope, lost everything, in bottomless waiting.”
A Conservative spokeswoman said: “The government remains extremely concerned about the welfare of British-Iranian dual nationals detained in Iran, including Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe. We continue to raise their cases at the most senior levels, and urge Iran to let them be reunited with their families.
“We are in regular contact with Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s family. The foreign secretary met Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s husband recently to reinforce the UK’s support for bringing his wife home.”
Amnesty International described Ratcliffe’s letter as harrowing adding: “This is an issue that transcends party politics, and we’d like to see the Prime Minister meet with Richard and Gabriella face-to-face as a matter of urgency, listen carefully to their concerns, and make it clear to them that the Government is prioritising their case.”