ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — A new charge has been brought against detained British-Iranian charity worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, Iranian state media reported Tuesday.
“The Branch 15 of the Islamic Revolutionary Court summoned Nazanin Zaghari with her lawyer this morning … and was told of an indictment in a new proceeding,” IRIBNEWS said, quoting an unnamed source.
Further details of the charge were not released.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe was arrested at Tehran’s Imam Khomeini Airport in April 2016 while visiting her parents with her baby daughter.
Employed by the Thomson Reuters Foundation, Zaghari-Ratcliffe was sentenced to five years in prison in September 2016 for plotting to overthrow the Iranian regime, charges which have been profusely denied by her family.
She was released from Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison in March and remains confined to her parents home with an ankle tag. Repeated calls for clemency have gone unanswered, leaving her family in a state of limbo.
The charity worker is one of several dual nationals arbitrarily detained in Iran on charges of espionage and sedition. Iran does not recognise dual nationality, limiting support available for Iranians with foreign citizenship imprisoned in its jails.
Richard Ratcliffe, Nazanin’s husband and leader of the Free Nazanin campaign, has previously described his wife’s detention as part of a “political game.”
UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace has acknowledged that the Wesminster is looking to resolve a long-standing debt dispute with Tehran , said to be behind the imprisonment of dual British-Iranian nationals.
The UK is believed to owe as much as £400 million to the Iranian government related to the purchase of military tanks before the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Both the UK and Iran have denied the connection to the detention of dual nationals, which has been refuted by Mr Ratcliffe.
