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Iran sets court date for jailed Briton Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe | Iran sets court date for jailed Briton Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe |
(35 minutes later) | |
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the British-Iranian woman accused of spying, has been told she will appear in court in Iran on 10 December, her husband has said. | |
Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who was arrested in Tehran in April last year, is serving a five-year jail term on charges of national security. There have been fears that she could be imprisoned for a further five years after comments by the foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, which he later apologised for, that she was “training journalists” in the country. | |
Speaking on Thursday, Richard Ratcliffe said he understood she would appear in court charged with spreading propaganda. | |
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is a 38-year-old 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. | |
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. | |
Zaghari-Ratcliffe is in Evin prison in Tehran, accused of spying and trying to topple the Iranian establishment. Her family believed that she was close to being released before Johnson’s remarks. | |
On 4 November, three days after his statement to the foreign affairs select committee, Zaghari-Ratcliffe was summoned before an unscheduled court hearing, where the foreign secretary’s comments were cited as proof that she was engaged in “propaganda against the regime”. | |
Ratcliffe insists his wife was visiting family in Iran at the time of her arrest. Her employer, Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of the news agency, has backed up her defence, releasing a statement making it clear that she was not working in Iran but was on holiday to show her daughter, Gabriella, to her grandparents. | |
There were calls for Johnson to resign after his remarks, with Jeremy Corbyn saying he was “putting our citizens at risk”. | |
Ratcliffe has said lumps have been found in his wife’s breasts that require an ultrasound scan and her state of mind has deteriorated to the extent that she is “on the verge of a nervous breakdown”. |