Crime & Justice

British-Iranian woman released after 5 years in prison in Iran

Tehran, Mar 7 (efe-epa).- British-Iranian aid worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who has been serving a prison sentence for espionage in Iran, has been released after completing five years in jail but was summoned again to court next week.

Lawyer Hojjat Kermani said that Zaghari-Ratcliffe had her house arrest lifted and her ankle tag removed.

British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab called for her to be allowed to return to Britain as soon as possible.

“We welcome the removal of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s ankle tag, but Iran’s continued treatment of her is intolerable,” Raab said on Twitter.

“She must be released permanently so she can return to her family in the UK.

“We have relayed to the Iranian authorities in the strongest possible terms that her continued confinement is unacceptable.”

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. She had been placed under house arrest since March last year in the Iranian capital.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe, however, will appear in court next Sunday for a hearing of her second charge of propaganda against the Islamic System, her lawyer told the Iranian news agency IRNA.

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-EPA

mv/smq/ks

Related Articles

Back to top button