Freeing Nazanin and Anoosheh
Inside the tireless campaign that led to the release of two British citizens from Iran
It is an unlikely friendship forged under the harshest of circumstances. A cakemaker and schoolgirl forced into becoming a potent campaigning partnership to free their parents back from unjust imprisonment in Iran.
Elika Ashoori, 35, and Gabriella Zaghari-Ratcliffe, 7, were reunited once more on Thursday, posing for selfies in an airport lounge as they awaited their parents’ descent from the jet finally bringing them home via Oman.
Gabriella Ratcliffe and Elika Ashoori make Christmas cookies for Boris Johnson, as part of a plea to bring their parents home. Photo: Elika Ashoori / Twitter
Gabriella Ratcliffe and Elika Ashoori make Christmas cookies for Boris Johnson, as part of a plea to bring their parents home. Photo: Elika Ashoori / Twitter
Their shared joy symbolised how years of misery, broken promises and dashed hopes united the families of the detained dual-citizens to find their voices and press governments to do more to free them.
For years, the British families were told to keep quiet and allow diplomacy to do its work and secure the release of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, 43, and Anoosheh Ashoori, 67. Some other families had heeded that advice and were successful – but these two remained stuck in Iran.
Led by Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s indefatigable husband, Richard, the young woman and the child became part of a formidable campaigning machine, embarrassing the UK government into repaying a decades-old arms deal debt with Iran that eventually led to Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Mr Ashoori's release.
Elika and Gabriella appeared together in videos, public appeals and to hand in petitions to Downing Street to keep the cases of their parents in the spotlight. It ended with joyous hugs in the early hours of Thursday after years apart.
Gabriella Ratcliffe plays a game of giant snakes and ladders in support of her mother, in Parliament Square in London on September 23, 2021 – the 2,000th day of her mother's detention in Iran. EPA
Gabriella Ratcliffe plays a game of giant snakes and ladders in support of her mother, in Parliament Square in London on September 23, 2021 – the 2,000th day of her mother's detention in Iran. EPA
“This day has been a long-time coming,” said Ms Ashoori. “Now, we can look forward to rebuilding those same foundations with our cornerstone back in place.”
The protracted saga offers lessons to international governments that they must learn to help other innocent victims still languishing in Iranian jails, experts said.
“While the release of Nazanin and Anoosheh brings relief and our hearts are full of joy for them and their family, unfortunately this is not the end of the hostage-taking policy of the Islamic regime in Iran,” said Shiva Mahbobi, a former political prisoner and spokeswoman for the Campaign to Free Political Prisoners in Iran.
The prisoners
Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Mr Ashoori were arrested 17 months apart during the peak of an Iranian policy to arrest and detain dual-citizens for use as bargaining chips by the regime with other nations.
Each were visiting relatives. Mr Ashoori, a retired engineer and father of two, was visiting his elderly mother in August 2017, a trip he had made many times.
Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who worked for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of the news organisation, was visiting her parents in April 2016 with her daughter Gabriella, then aged only 22 months. Her husband Richard, an accountant, remained at home in north London.
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe with husband Richard Ratcliffe and their daughter Gabriella, pictured before her arrest in Iran. Photo: Zaghari-Ratcliffe family
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe with husband Richard Ratcliffe and their daughter Gabriella, pictured before her arrest in Iran. Photo: Zaghari-Ratcliffe family
Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe was frequently moved between prisons for the first two months before she landed in Evin Prison in Tehran in June 2016, where she was held in solitary confinement for weeks and restricted from contacting her husband and family in the UK.
British officials were also barred from visiting. Iran does not recognise dual-citizenship. It considered both prisoners as Iranian and said the UK had no basis for intervening.
Anoosheh Ashoori and his wife Sherry Izadi. Photo: Sherry Izadi
Anoosheh Ashoori and his wife Sherry Izadi. Photo: Sherry Izadi
Both were convicted on trumped up security charges. Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe was initially sentenced to five years in jail on unspecified charges of plotting against the regime. Mr Ashoori was convicted of spying for Israel and other nations and was told he would spend 10 years behind bars.
Both had been living in the UK for a decade before they were arrested on their return to the country, where they were born.
There was little else to connect them, though they had both responded to one of the country’s greatest disasters, the earthquake at Bam in south-eastern Iran in 2003 that killed 34,000 people and left 200,000 injured.
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori smile as their flight passes over London on March 17, 2022. Photo: Twitter @salqaq
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori smile as their flight passes over London on March 17, 2022. Photo: Twitter @salqaq
Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe went to work as a translator in the relief effort for a Japanese development agency. Mr Ashoori’s work involved designing materials to help protect those in earthquake-prone regions. The materials he designed were vital in reconstructing the city.
The pair were among 30 dual-citizens arrested by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) over two years, figures compiled by Reuters showed.
Most of them were held on spying charges. Groups campaigning on behalf of the prisoners had incomplete lists because families were urged by governments not to go public with their cases.
Meanwhile, Iran's judiciary, comprising officials who owed their positions to the IRGC, kept them behind bars without evidence.
Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s case was handled by notorious judge Abolghassem Salavati, who oversaw numerous cases of foreigners jailed on trumped-up charges. Known as the “Hanging Judge” because of his harsh use of the penal system, he was sanctioned by the United States in 2019.
“He’s a tool of the regime’s oppression, not an impartial friend of justice,” said Mike Pompeo, who was US secretary of state under former president Donald Trump.
Who is Anoosheh Ashoori
A retired engineer, Anoosheh Ashoori, 67, lived in London before he was imprisoned at Evin Prison, in Tehran, for five years.
He was visiting his mother in Tehran in 2017 when he was snatched off the street.
He was falsely convicted of spying for Israel and added to the roster of western dual-nationals being used as pawns in a broader diplomatic battle between London and Tehran.
His family’s fight for his freedom was frequently frustrated by difficulties raising the profile of his case.
“Very few people know my name,” he wrote in an article for The Guardian.
He compiled an audio diary from behind bars for The National during the Covid-19 pandemic, detailing the prison authorities’ chaotic response to the crisis and the desperate conditions in which prisoners lived.
In a subsequent audio message to the leaders of Iran and UK, Mr Ashoori he said he feared he would never again be able to hug his wife and family because he could catch Covid-19 and die, due to poor medical assistance.
His loss of hope led to him to attempt suicide. He spent time with a group of educated inmates, who taught each other lessons from their lives.
Mr Ashoori gave his own lessons based on a career dedicated to designing building materials for use in earthquake zones.
He was able to call his wife, Sherry Izadi, on Tuesday, after being released to his mother’s house in Tehran. But he still had his doubts he would be free.
“He told me, ‘I will believe it when I’m on the plane’,” she said.
Who is Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe
Richard Ratcliffe once said that before his wife Nazanin's detention, she was ”really, really proud” of Iran.
“The Iran she knew and she loved is not the Iran that has treated her this way. That is one of the hardest things,” he said.
Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe, 43, was born and raised in Tehran and studied English literature at the capital's university, before becoming an English teacher.
Following a devastating earthquake in Iran in 2003, she went to work as a translator in the relief effort for the Japanese International Co-operation Agency.
She then went on to work for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, before moving to the World Health Organisation as a communications officer.
Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe came to the UK in 2007, after securing a scholarship at London Metropolitan University to study for a master’s degree in communication management.
She began working at Thomson Reuters Foundation in 2011 as a project co-ordinator, before taking on the role of a project manager.
But it was a month after her arrival in the UK that she met her future husband through mutual friends.
Describing their first date, Mr Ratcliffe said they “clicked” and he felt like he had “come home”.
The couple married in August 2009 in Winchester and their daughter Gabriella was born in June 2014, something Mr Ratcliffe said changed both their outlooks on life.
“It was very important for Nazanin to keep going back to Iran to show her daughter to her parents ... before she would always go once a year, but she tried to go twice after,” he said.
Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe has scarcely seen her daughter throughout her ordeal. Although Gabriella stayed with her grandparents for the first few years of her mother’s incarceration, she returned to her father in Britain in October 2019. However, during Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe's furlough from prison, the family would speak on video chat for four or five hours a day.
Mr Ratcliffe described his wife as very houseproud, meticulous and tidy. He said she has a “pretty keen sense of justice”, and is “outraged” by what has happened to her and her daughter.
The husband
Richard Ratcliffe, 45, who had worked as an accountant with the UK’s public spending watchdog, was not impressed with the British government’s response to his wife’s detention.
He felt that it used Iran’s decision not to use consular access to dual-nationals as an excuse for inaction.
Richard Ratcliffe and his wife Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who was jailed in Iran in April 2016. PA via AP
Richard Ratcliffe and his wife Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who was jailed in Iran in April 2016. PA via AP
I first met Mr Ratcliffe in October 2017 at the showing of Nazanin’s Story, a play held at the offices of the Thomson Reuters Foundation. The story brought to life the anguish and abusive tactics of Evin’s interrogators that had left Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe with untreated mental and physical problems.
By then, his wife had spent more than a year behind bars. Calm, unfailingly polite and patient, he had already built a formidable campaign helped by family, Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s employers and supporters who rallied to the cause of a wife separated from her family.
For the first three years, Mr Ratcliffe was on his own at home. His daughter Gabriella was staying with his wife’s parents in Tehran so she could visit her mother at Evin Prison.
The family in an undated photograph released by Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe's relations. Photo: Ratcliffe family
The family in an undated photograph released by Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe's relations. Photo: Ratcliffe family
During the early days of her imprisonment, Mr Ratcliffe vowed the pair would return to the UK together. Their daughter provided the hope for his wife to get through the long days of isolation because she was “falling apart” in prison.
Imprisonment lasted for so long that Gabriella was brought to the UK in October 2019 to attend school. “I have no hope or motivation after my baby goes,” Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe wrote in a letter smuggled from prison. “There is no measure to my pain.”
“She [Gabriella] was always promised that she would come back with mummy, and that’s not what happened,” Mr Ratcliffe said later. “She came back before mummy.”
Mr Ratcliffe sent regular, detailed updates on his campaign. He worked with lawyers from the anti-torture charity Redress from the early days of his wife’s detention.
In February 2018, based on Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe's account from prison, he wrote of how she was summoned to speak to a judge about her case, after spending 691 days behind bars.
Richard Ratcliffe ends his hunger strike on November 13, 2021, after spending 21 days camped outside the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office in London. PA
Richard Ratcliffe ends his hunger strike on November 13, 2021, after spending 21 days camped outside the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office in London. PA
The judge told her about continued wrangling over a historic debt between Britain and Iran. The UK accepted that the money had to be paid but the two sides were still arguing over the correct level of interest.
“Who would take a mum and a baby hostage to get money?” Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe asked the judge. “That money is Iran’s right,” the judge said.
Mr Ratcliffe pointed out that the government promised no stone would be left unturned in the struggle for her release.
“A fight over a half or 1 per cent of interest rate does not seem such a big stone worth keeping a mother in prison away from her baby,” he said.
“After 691 days, my biggest fear is the risk of another stand-off while we are asked to wait quietly and not offend.”
The daughter
Elika Ashoori emerged as a powerful advocate for her family, using social media to promote her father’s case and other prisoners held in Iran.
The family suspect that Iran seized on their social media to trick Mr Ashoori into believing their agents were tracking family members in London.
During 12-hour interrogations, he was told his family in London would be harmed and that operatives had been to Ms Ashoori’s stall at a London market, where she sells her own cakes.
The apparent insight prompted Mr Ashoori to seek to end his life to avoid further trouble for his family, the UK Parliament was told.
From left, Tulip Siddiq MP, Richard Ratcliffe, daughter Gabriella, Elika Ashoori and Janet Daby MP arrive to 10 Downing Street to deliver a petition signed by Members of Parliament calling on Boris Johnson to work to free Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, on September 23, 2021. EPA
From left, Tulip Siddiq MP, Richard Ratcliffe, daughter Gabriella, Elika Ashoori and Janet Daby MP arrive to 10 Downing Street to deliver a petition signed by Members of Parliament calling on Boris Johnson to work to free Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, on September 23, 2021. EPA
But Ms Ashoori, who describes herself as a “closet geek … who occasionally gives acting a go”, continued to use Twitter and Instagram to call for the release of prisoners held on false charges.
Little more than three weeks ago, she went online with a public call for the release of Nahid Taghavi, a German dual-citizen who has spent more than a year in an Iranian jail.
“Every single day I do whatever I can to keep his [Mr Ashoori’s] name alive,” she told the BBC. “The nature of my business is to constantly talk to people about weddings, birthdays and to be excited for them, and that’s why it was very difficult at first for me to do my job.
“I didn’t want to make things for happy people, as horrible as that sounds. Now I use my business and I use my cakes to focus on people’s happiness, because it’s like a beam of hope.”
A video published in December 2020 showed Ms Ashoori and Gabriella Zaghari-Ratcliffe making cakes together and talking about their hopes and fears.
From left, family members Aryan Ashoori, Sherry Izadi and Elika Ashoori stage an empty chair protest opposite Downing Street, on the 4th anniversary of Anoosheh Ashoori's imprisonment, in London on August 13, 2021. Reuters
From left, family members Aryan Ashoori, Sherry Izadi and Elika Ashoori stage an empty chair protest opposite Downing Street, on the 4th anniversary of Anoosheh Ashoori's imprisonment, in London on August 13, 2021. Reuters
Elika said her last wish was for “my dad and your mum” to come home. Gabriella told of how she missed her mother most at night, when she cried herself to sleep.
“A two-generation gap between us but we both share something that’s really profound,” said Ms Ashoori in the video, produced by human rights group Amnesty International. “I can tell that it’s a really hard subject for her to address. She kind of either deflects or refuses to talk about it.”
The debt
The outstanding debt between the two countries dated back to a lucrative deal that saw the UK agree to sell 1,500 Chieftain tanks and other armoured vehicles to the Shah of Iran for £650 million.
Fewer than 200 tanks had been delivered by the time of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, a change in circumstances that led to the collapse of the deal.
The shah had paid up front, so the UK kept the money. It later resold some of the tanks to Iraq before the 1980-88 war between Iran and Iraq, in a move that infuriated Tehran. Before he became defence secretary, Ben Wallace once described Britain’s role in the affair as one “marred by double dealing and obfuscation”.
Years of courtroom battles followed before a Dutch-based international commercial court in 2001 ruled on the level of the debt to be repaid. But the exact amount had not been concluded before sanctions were imposed on the Iranian military authority seeking the return of the money in 2008.
Even in 2010, years before Mr Ashoori and Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe were taken prisoner, Ali Ansari, a leading Iran expert told The Independent that it had taken an “enormously long time” to resolve the debt.
“Any debtor will always drag their feet but London has dragged this out spectacularly,” he told the newspaper. “I suppose this shows the tenacity of Iran on these matters. They really do not let these things go.”
Jeremy Hunt, foreign secretary at the time, meets Richard Ratcliffe to discuss Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe's detainment. Photo: Jeremy Hunt Twitter
Jeremy Hunt, foreign secretary at the time, meets Richard Ratcliffe to discuss Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe's detainment. Photo: Jeremy Hunt Twitter
The families of the prisoners seized on the issue despite both countries claiming it had nothing to do with detention of the British dual-citizens.
Both the Ratcliffes and Ashooris, by this time fighting their own battle for public support, saw the dispute as a thorn in the side of relations between the two countries. They believed it was crucial to resolving the issue of the detainees.
The families pointed out that the US had settled a similar debt of $400m in 2016 over an undelivered pre-revolution fighter jet deal that led to the release of five Americans under Barack Obama’s presidency.
At a hearing in London’s High Court in 2019, observers seated at the back of the court included London-based Iranian officials side-by-side with Mr Ratcliffe and Ms Izadi, the wife of Mr Ashoori.
The British court later cited Iran’s anger that it was yet to receive a penny, despite an award being made in its favour 18 years previously, but accepted that lawyers from both sides agreed that the UK “cannot lawfully pay … anything”.
The campaign
The passing years turned the campaign for freedom into one of survival. Both Mr Ashoori and Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe had health problems and both had suicidal thoughts, their campaign teams said.
The Covid-19 pandemic left prisoners in Iran’s filthy and crowded jails fearing for their lives. Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe was allowed to leave prison in March 2020 because of the pandemic. She was made to wear an ankle tag and not venture further than 300 metres from her parents’ home in Tehran.
Mr Ashoori remained in Evin Prison and charted the chaos in a series of audio messages for The National, in which he described prison medics prescribing sleeping pills for inmates suspected of contracting Covid-19.
Hand-painted messages of support on stones in the temporary camp where Richard Ratcliffe carried out a hunger strike in 2021 in front of the UK Foreign Office in London. Getty
Hand-painted messages of support on stones in the temporary camp where Richard Ratcliffe carried out a hunger strike in 2021 in front of the UK Foreign Office in London. Getty
He sent a further message the leaders of Iran and Britain, urging them to help him escape the “hellhole” so he could return to the UK and hug his family again.
Hopeful signs throughout the years were punctuated by the effects of international politics. Ill-judged comments by Prime Minister Boris Johnson, at the time foreign secretary, suggesting that Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe was in Iran to train journalists were seized on by state media to justify claims that she was seeking to undermine the regime.
The decision by Donald Trump to withdraw from the Obama-era nuclear deal damaged relations between Iran and the West and made dialogue more difficult. Mr Ratcliffe believed the death of Iranian military leader Qassem Soleimani, killed in a missile attack in January 2020, would only worsen the plight of the detainees.
Richard Ratcliffe and Gabriella hold signs in Parliament Square in London to mark the 2,000th day Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has been detained in Iran, on September 23, 2021. PA
Richard Ratcliffe and Gabriella hold signs in Parliament Square in London to mark the 2,000th day Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has been detained in Iran, on September 23, 2021. PA
In 2019, Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe was given “diplomatic protection”, raising the status of her case and making it a formal dispute between the two countries. It had little discernible effect on the treatment of her case by Iran.
The families were now working closely with others in the US and Europe with appearances at the UN and using their collective voice to urge governments to make deals with Iran only if they released the prisoners.
The deal
The campaign received fresh impetus with the election of US President Joe Biden, a key player in the original 2015 nuclear deal, who was intent on rejoining the programme.
Families of prisoners began lobbying their governments hard when talks started in Vienna in April 2021 to ensure that freedom for dual-citizens were part of any agreement. The US heeded the calls and hardened its public stance after the talks began, said campaigners. Robert Malley, the US special envoy for Iran, in January effectively ruled out a deal without prisoners being released.
Then president of Iran Hassan Rouhani, meets then British foreign secretary Boris Johnson in Tehran, on December 10, 2017, to discuss cases of dual-citizens jailed in Iran. Photo: Presidential Office Handout
Then president of Iran Hassan Rouhani, meets then British foreign secretary Boris Johnson in Tehran, on December 10, 2017, to discuss cases of dual-citizens jailed in Iran. Photo: Presidential Office Handout
Experts said the global crisis had led to conditions being right for a deal on the British prisoners, with Tehran desperate for finance.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 provided an opening for Iran to show it could potentially fulfil some of the energy demands of the West and relieve its own desperate financial position, said Dr Allan Hassaniyan, an expert on the Middle East at the University of Exeter.
“The war has opened a window for Iran, which will allow it to show the West it can offer an alternative with its oil and gas,” he said.
“Iran is trying to protect its own economic, political and financial system from the isolation it is experiencing. Right now, it is in the middle of establishing the nuclear deal.
“I think they are really desperate and they need cash.”
The reunion
The UK’s eventual payment of the debt of almost £400 million ($523m) finally cleared the way for the return of the two dual-citizens. It also signalled a potential step towards reaching agreement on the nuclear deal.
Once Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s lawyer in Iran told reporters on Tuesday that her return was imminent, events moved quickly. She received her passport, while Mr Ashoori was released from prison the same day and was taken under guard to his mother’s house.
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe pictured on a plane leaving Iran after six years. Photo: Tulip Siddiq / Twitter
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe pictured on a plane leaving Iran after six years. Photo: Tulip Siddiq / Twitter
After a flight on Wednesday to Oman, they arrived back at Brize Norton, an air base west of London, early on Thursday.
Their return was captured on Elika’s phone with Gabriella at her side. The girl was heard asking, “Is that mummy?” in the video shared on Instagram, as her mother walked down the plane steps.
Even in the joy of the reunion, there were calls for an investigation into why it took so long for the prisoners to come home. “This should be happening six years ago,” Mr Ashoori can be heard saying on his daughter’s video.
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori pose with air crew, after being freed from Iran, in England on March 17, 2022. Photo: @salqaq / Twitter
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori pose with air crew, after being freed from Iran, in England on March 17, 2022. Photo: @salqaq / Twitter
The family said shifts in geopolitics had suddenly thrust their plight centre-stage after years of being considered unimportant.
“I just wish if efforts had been made to pay it [the arms debt] earlier, all of us would have been saved a tonne of heartache,” Ms Izadi told The National.
Timeline
March 17, 2016: Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe travels to visit her family in Iran to introduce her daughter Gabriella to them and celebrate Nowruz, the Iranian New Year.
April 3, 2016: She is detained by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard at Imam Khomeini Airport as she tries to fly home to the UK.
July 12, 2016: Richard Ratcliffe, her husband, delivers letters to Downing Street on his wife’s 100th day in custody. He says it is “astonishing” no British minister has publicly criticised Tehran for the arrest.
August 9, 2016: UK prime UK minister at the time Theresa May “raises concerns” during a phone call with the then president of Iran, Hassan Rouhani.
September 9, 2016: Mr Ratcliffe says his wife has been jailed for five years after a conviction on unspecified “national security-related” offences – a sentence he describes as “a punishment without a crime”.
November 13, 2016: Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe begins a hunger strike, which she ends after five days amid fears for her health.
April 24, 2017: The family say she has lost the final stage of her appeal.
November 6, 2017: Then foreign secretary Boris Johnson incorrectly states that Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe trained journalists for the Thomson Reuters Foundation. Four days later, she is summoned before an unscheduled court hearing, where his comments are cited as proof that she was engaged in “propaganda against the regime”.
November 12, 2017: Mr Ratcliffe says his wife has seen a medical specialist after finding lumps on her breast and is “on the verge of a nervous breakdown”.
December 12, 2017: Mr Johnson says he and his Iranian counterpart spoke “frankly” regarding the case of Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe, during talks in Tehran.
April 14, 2018: Iranian ambassador to the UK at the time, Hamid Baeidinejad, says the Iranian government is doing its best to secure the prisoner’s release, saying the judicial process was “complicated” but insisting: “We are trying our best.”
May 21, 2018: Mr Ratcliffe says his wife has been told to expect another conviction after appearing in court over a new “invented” charge.
August 21, 2018: New foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt says he is considering a request for diplomatic protection.
August 23, 2018: Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe is given temporary release from jail for three days and her husband says it feels like “home is one step closer”. She returns to prison three days later.
September 26, 2018: Then prime minister Mrs May and Mr Hunt crank up pressure on Iran to release the charity worker during talks in New York. The PM tells Iranian president at the time, Hassan Rouhani, of her “serious concerns” about the jailing of Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe.
December 26, 2018: The aid worker turns 40 in jail. Three days later, she marks her 1,000th day of incarceration.
June 15, 2019: She begins another hunger strike, this time lasting 15 days. Her husband joins her in a show of solidarity outside the Iranian embassy in London.
October 10, 2019: The couple’s daughter, Gabriella, returns to the UK after more than three years in the Middle East. She had been living with her grandparents in Tehran since her mother’s arrest.
December 18, 2019: Mr Ratcliffe is joined by Gabriella singing Christmas carols outside No 10 Downing Street, and he calls on Boris Johnson, who is now Prime Minister, to “please take responsibility for Nazanin’s case and do what you can to get her and others home”.
January 3, 2020: A US air strike kills top Iranian general Qassem Soleimani.
January 10, 2020: The aid worker spends one night in a clinic after suffering “palpitations and panic attacks” due to the tension in Tehran, sparked by the death of Gen Soleimani, her husband says.
March 17, 2020: Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe is freed temporarily from jail, amid a Covid-19 outbreak. She says she is “happy to be out, even with the ankle tag” but can only go within 300 metres of her parents’ home.
March 28, 2020: Mr Ratcliffe says his wife’s file has been put forward to the Iranian prosecutor general to be considered for clemency.
April 21, 2020: Her prison release is extended. The family are able to talk via video calls for about four or five hours a day.
September 8, 2020: She appears before a branch of Islamic Revolutionary Court in Tehran, on a new charge.
March 7, 2021: On the day her sentence is due to end, her constituency MP Tulip Siddiq reveals Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s electronic tag has been removed but she faces a new court date.
April 26, 2021: She is given an additional one-year jail term and is banned from leaving Iran for a year. Her lawyer Hojjat Kermani says she received the second jail sentence on a charge of spreading “propaganda against the system” for participating in a protest in front of the Iranian embassy in London in 2009.
May 2, 2021: Iranian state TV claims Britain will pay the £400 million ($528m) debt relating to a cancelled order for 1,500 Chieftain tanks dating back to the 1970s, paving the way for the prisoner’s release. This is denied by UK officials.
September 23, 2021: Mr Ratcliffe marks 2,000 days since his wife was detained, the day after newly appointed Foreign Secretary Liz Truss uses a meeting with her Iranian counterpart to raise the case.
October 16, 2021: Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe loses her latest appeal in Iran.
November 13, 2021: Mr Ratcliffe ends a 21-day hunger strike outside the Foreign Office in central London.
November 17, 2021: Mr Johnson tells the Commons Liaison Committee it is “worth considering” sending a plane with a “crate of cash” to Iran to settle the £400m debt.
February 9, 2022: Ms Siddiq asks Mr Johnson at Prime Minister’s Questions to intervene after she learns a deal agreed with the Iranian authorities in the summer of 2021 had fallen through. Mr Johnson says the “debt is difficult to settle” but ministers are working on it.
March 15, 2022: Ms Siddiq says her constituent has had her British passport returned and a team of officials are in Tehran to negotiate.
March 16, 2022: Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe is freed. She is taken to Imam Khomeini Airport by Revolutionary Guards and handed over to a British government team and flies home, via Oman.
March 17, 2022: Six years to the day since she arrived in Iran on her ill-fated trip, Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe lands in the UK, alongside Anoosheh Ashoori, to be reunited with her family at RAF Brize Norton.
Words: Paul Peachey
Editor: Paul Carey and Juman Jarallah
Design: Nick Donaldson
Photo Editor: Jake Badger
Sub-Editor: Donald MacPhail
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