By Lucy Caulkett-
A British woman who spent over two years behind bars in Tehran’s Evin prison has been released for a few days. Zaghari Ratcliffe had been let out to reunite with her four-year-old daughter, Gabriella. Gabriella was placed in the care of her Iranian family while she was kept in jail, her husband, Richard Ratcliffe, said.
In April 2016, Zaghari-Ratcliffe was arrested in Tehran by members of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards at Imam Khomeini international airport where she and her then 22-months-old daughter, Gabriella, were about to board a flight back to the UK after a family visit. Unfortunately, she was then accused of attempting to orchestrate a “soft overthrow” of the Islamic Republic, spying and running “a BBC Persian online journalism course which was aimed at recruiting and training people to spread propaganda against Iran”.
In October, the Iranian judicial authorities later reopened her case and tried her on additional charges based on claims of fresh evidence that appear to include a BBC pay stub and contents of her personal email. But Johnson’s visit to Tehran in December appeared to help the new case to be put aside. Iran’s state TV, however, aired a series of programmes citing Johnson’s erroneous statement as “an inadvertent confession” that she was spying in Iran.
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. She was sentenced to five years in jail on charges relating to national security. In jail, her mental and physical condition became fragile as her husband revealed that she was losing her hair and experiencing “low and despairing” moods as her incarceration lasted far beyond her family’s expectation.
“It will be just awesome for Gabriella to have mummy home finally,” Zaghari-Ratcliffe said while on temporary furlough, according to her husband.
“We can play with her doll’s house, and she can show me her toys. The thought of brushing her hair, and giving her a bath. of being able to take her to the park, and feed her, and sleep next to her – it just kills me. It is still so hard to believe.”
Zaghari-Ratcliffe said her temporary release was a surprise. “I wasn’t expecting it at all when it was mentioned two weeks ago. I didn’t tell Gabriella or for a long time my mum – so if it didn’t happen I would be the only one to suffer,” she said.
“I was so emotional to see my grandmother today. I cried so much. I felt so overwhelmed. My dad’s home is not my home – but it is so much better than prison. People in the ward were so excited – they sang songs and danced. I baked for them in celebration. It felt like this really could be the beginning of the end.”
Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s ordeal, the most high-profile in a string of cases involving dual nationals held in Iran, received huge attention in the UK after her fate became intertwined with the former foreign secretary Boris Johnson’s political career after he made an erroneous statement that complicated her legal battle. That mistake forced Johnson to expedite his first visit to Tehran, during which he lobbied the Iranian authorities for her release.
Ratcliffe’s arrest overshadowed bilateral relations between London and Tehran for almost two years ago. Comments made by former Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson, appeared to worsen Ratcliffe’s fate after Johnson suggested she had been in Iran for journalistic purposes.n October, the Iranian judicial authorities later reopened her case and tried her on additional charges based on claims of fresh evidence that appear to include a BBC pay stub and contents of her personal email. But Johnson’s visit to Tehran in December appeared to help the new case to be put aside.
Johnson became personally involved in the case after he mistakenly said before a parliamentary committee in November that she was training journalists in Iran, while in fact she was on holiday.
“I want to thank Jeremy Hunt for all his efforts, and for the efforts of all of his staff and all the Iranian authorities involved. I have been very critical in the past – I may need to be critical again. But today is a good day, hopefully the turn of a new leaf as well as stone. It happened thanks to the personal care of the many people involved in Tehran, London and around the world.”