British-Iranian woman handed second prison sentence in Iran

Tehran, Apr 26 (EFE).- An Iranian court has handed British-Iranian aid worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe a one-year prison sentence and a one-year travel ban for propaganda against Tehran, her attorney Hoyat Kermani said on Monday.

Kermani told Efe that they were notified of the verdict on Monday after the final session of her second trial was held on 14 March.

She was accused of carrying out “propaganda activities against the system for participating in a demonstration in front of the Iranian Embassy in London in 2009″ during the rallies sparked by the re-election of the then-president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, he explained.

The accusations were also based on her “giving an interview to the BBC Persian service,” he added.

“The court has sentenced her to one year in prison and a one-year ban to leave the country,” he said, adding that he would appeal the verdict.

The ruling was criticized by the British foreign minister Dominic Raab as “totally inhumane and wholly unjustified”.

“We continue to call on Iran to release Nazanin immediately so she can return to her family in the UK. We continue to do all we can to support her,” Raab posted to his Twitter account.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who worked as a project manager for the charity Thomson Reuters Foundation, was arrested in 2016 when she was visiting family in Tehran.

The 42-year-old was sentenced to five years in prison for espionage in Iran, which she completed on 7 March and had her house arrest lifted and her ankle tag removed.

Her case sparked outrage among the media, the UK government, and Amnesty International that rejected the five-year prison sentence over crimes related to national security, which both Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Thomson Reuters Foundation denied. EFE