Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and her husband Richard spent almost an hour answering questions from the media following her release from Iranian custody.
The main points covered in the press conference:
During the press conference, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe said “I have been a pawn in the hands of two governments over the past six years.”
“I don’t think anybody’s life should be linked to a global agreement. Every human being has the right to be free.”
“My life was linked to something that’s got nothing to do with me. Why do we have to pay a price for that?” she added.
She says the plight of dual nationals should not be linked to government deals: “Their stories have to be separately dealt with.”
Zaghari-Ratcliffe says it shouldn’t have taken the government six years to get her released.
At the press conference in Westminister, she said: “What’s happened now should have happened six years ago. I shouldn’t have been in prison for six years.”
“I have seen five foreign secretaries change over the course of six years,” Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe said.
“How many foreign secretaries does it take for someone to come home?
“We all know… how I came home. It should have happened exactly six years ago.”
Before the event, she also met privately with Speaker of the House Sir Lindsay Hoyle.
Anoosheh Ashoori – another British-Iranian national was released at the same time, whilst Morad Tahbaz – who has British, Iranian and American citizenship remains in detention in Tehran.
Richard Ratcliffe spoke on the government’s handling of his wife’s case, he said, in regards to the government paying its debt, that those who took Nazanin will be “patting themselves on the back” for what they got and will be “squeezing” the other prisoners for more.
He acknowledged that it is a challenge for the government and international community to deal with state-hostage taking but the government must “be brave” and “tough.”
He added there “a legal debt is not a ransom” and there is a “moral hazard” in linking a legal debt to a prison release.
Ms Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, 43, is a dual British and Iranian citizen. Before she was arrested she lived in London with her husband Richard Ratcliffe and their daughter.
Nazanin worked as a project manager for the charity Thomson Reuters Foundation and was previously employed by BBC Media Action – an international development charity. Her husband Richard is an accountant.
She was detained whilst visiting Iran with her daughter Gabriella.
Iranian authorities say Zaghari-Ratcliffe was plotting to topple the government in Tehran – but no official charges were ever made public.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards say she was leading a “foreign-linked hostile network”, and sentenced her to five years in prison.
She says she had been taking her daughter, now six, to visit her parents and celebrate the Iranian new year.
Thomson Reuters Foundation and BBC Media Action issued statements at the time confirming her trip was a holiday and not work-related.
For the final year of her prison sentence, she was on parole at her parent’s home in Tehran. But in April 2021 she was sentenced to another year behind bars and was slapped with a one-year travel ban after being found guilty of propaganda against the Iranian government.
She lost an appeal against the second conviction.
The Independent reports: “Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe calls for release of other detainees in Iran” as it picks up on her calls to end to the detention of other dual nationals still held in Iran, saying without their release “the meaning of freedom is never going to be complete”.
The British-Iranian dual national also said: ‘What happened now should have happened six years ago.’
The Daily Mirror’s headline reads “Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe breaks silence on Iran prison hell – “I’ll be haunted forever”
Of her detainment, Zaghari-Ratcliffe went on to say “it will always haunt me”, before adding authorities in Iran told her she could not be released until they got “something off the Brits”.
The Times quotes Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe as saying ‘five foreign secretaries and I couldn’t trust them’. Addressing the media for the first time since she was released last Thursday, after six years in prison, she said there had been five foreign secretaries in that time and that she had struggled to trust them because they continually promised they would reunite her with her family in Britain.
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