“In parallel” to the release of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe43 years old, and Anoosheh Ashoori67, London announced that it had paid off an old debt with Tehran of 394 million pounds (518 million dollars), although without establishing any link between the two events.
The two landed at RAF Brize Norton air base in south-west Englandat 01:08 (local and GMT) after a stopover in Oman. The two appeared relaxed and smiling, waving at the cameras before heading inside the airfield.
Retired engineer Anoosheh Ashoori, arrested in Iran in August 2017 while visiting his mother and sentenced to 10 years in prison for espionage for Israel“He was released” due to “his advanced age and physical condition,” an Iranian judicial spokesman quoted by the Fars news agency reported.
Also Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, sentenced to prison for sedition in 2016, “is coming home,” British MP Tulip Siddiq said on Twitter, before the government of Boris Johnson confirmed the return of both.
“We can go back to being a normal family,” said Richard Ratcliffe, who fought tirelessly for years for the UK to obtain the release of his wife, whose case shocked the country.
Their relatives have always denounced that both had been held hostage until the British government paid off the debt of 394 million pounds for a sale of tanks that was canceled when the Islamic revolution overthrew the Shah of Iran in 1979.
Johnson’s executive has denied that the detention of these and other people in Iran was related to said debt.
British Foreign Minister Liz Truss justified the delay in her payment by the international sanctions imposed on Iran due to its nuclear program.
However, on Wednesday, after Siddiq posted a photo of Nazanin beaming on a plane on Twitter, the UK announced that the debt had been paid off.
“It was paid in compliance with British and international sanctions and these funds will be used only for the purchase of humanitarian goods,” Truss said.
“Nazanin and Anoosheh should not have been arrested to begin with, they were imprisoned on false accusations of national security, a common tactic in Iran,” said Sacha Deshmukh, head of the NGO International Amnesty.
They were “used as pawns” by the Iranian authorities who “acted with calculated cruelty, trying to extract the maximum diplomatic value from their captivity”, he added.
His return puts an end to years of ordeal.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe, 43, a project manager for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the philanthropic arm of the news agency of the same name, was detained while traveling to Tehran with her daughter to visit family.
Accused of plotting to overthrow the Islamic Republic, she was sentenced to five years in prison.
Separated from the little girl, who was left in the care of her grandparents until she returned to London years later, Zaghari-Ratcliffe denounced mistreatment in prison, went on a hunger strike, suffered from depression and had to be hospitalized in a psychiatric unit.
After having served her first sentence, she was sentenced again last April to one year for having participated in a rally in front of the Iranian embassy in London in 2009.
And in October the justice dismissed her appeal, raising fears of a new imprisonment, after having been placed under house arrest in March 2020 as a result of the pandemic.
In images published on the Instagram of Ashoori’s daughter, the reunion between the seven-year-old girl, Gabriella, and her mother is seen.
“Is it mom?… Mom!” he yells when he recognizes her, running to her and throwing himself into her arms. “Do I smell good?” says Zaghari-Ratcliffe, “I haven’t had a shower in 24 hours.”
Source: Ambito
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