'Keeping home alive': The fight to free Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – The husband of jailed British-Iranian charity worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe says he is in a fight to "keep home alive" as his wife, and mother to their young daughter, faces a new criminal charge.

Just weeks before a new charge was brought against his wife, Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s husband Richard Ratcliffe told Rudaw English of the battle for her release and the horrors she faced in Tehran's notorious Evin prison, where she spent four years before being released on effective house arrest in March during the coronavirus pandemic.

"We're caught in the middle of a game of chess, and we only see one part of it," he said from the UK.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe, 42, was arrested at Tehran's Imam Khomeini airport in April of 2016 following a visit to her parents for the spring holiday of Newroz with her baby daughter. The charity worker, then employed with Thomson Reuters Foundation, had visited the country four times in the first 18 months of her daughter's life before she was stopped on her way home to London.

In September 2016, she was convicted of attempting to "topple the Iranian government"– charges that were not made known to her family until much later.

"There are times when she gets quite despairing that she's stuck. There's a big uncertainty. She was given a five-year sentence, and we're now four and a half years in. Given how they've made up everything in the court process so far, I don't think we can sanguinely presume this will all be over next spring,” said her husband.

"I think the closer we get, the more likely they are to give her a new sentence, and I don't think it's easy for Nazanin to talk about that with me," said Ratcliffe, who runs the 'Free Nazanin' campaign.

Almost five years later after her arrest, including eight-and-a-half months of solitary confinement, Zaghari-Ratcliffe is confined to her parent's home with an ankle tag, denied access to medical attention. Her husband told Rudaw English of the "conspicuous suffering" faced at the hands of Iran's Revolutionary Guards in Evin prison, which he says has been consistently downplayed by British authorities.

"It's a sophisticated playbook of cruelty,” he said. When Gabriella would visit her mother in prison, the guards would “make sure they played with Gabriella first, they would call their children at night while she was crying, just to show they could."

"This type of abuse doesn't leave physical scars. They've learnt to do things that have a devastating effect, but you can't take a photograph and send it to court."

Ratcliffe has been vocal in pushing the British government to act on the case, which has passed through numerous UK foreign ministers. He has met with Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and held hunger strikes outside of the Iranian embassy in coordination with his wife.

Iran's official line is that it does not recognise dual nationality, effectively barring foreign states from offering consular support to dual Iranian nationals arrested or detained in the country – but the families of those detained say the UK could be doing more.

"It took the British government a very long time to acknowledge that there was any abuse of Nazanin's rights, that she was innocent, that Gabriella was being held, we had to battle so hard for that," said Ratcliffe, adding that it took six months for British authorities to ask for her daughter's passport to be released by Tehran.

Now six years old, Gabriella, who returned to the UK in late 2019, has had to adjust to a new life and is learning English.

The return of his daughter has turned Ratcliffe's thoughts to the future and the life that awaits his family if his wife is released.

"Part of any campaign is the battle to get her home, but the other battle is keeping home alive," he told Rudaw English. "And that's become much more real and tangible now."

"Keeping home alive, you don't do that on your own – its normal people reminding you that the world can be different, the world should be different, that it will be different. The most important of campaigning is keeping alive a different day. Who knows when it will end."

The battle to bring Nazanin home has hit another hurdle, with a new case opened against her on Tuesday. Much of the material is believed to be revived from previous cases, branded "illegal in Iran's double jeopardy law" by her husband.

In a detailed press release on Wednesday, Ratcliffe said his wife, who has been sewing face masks for her former cellmates imprisoned in a country hard-hit by the coronavirus pandemic, was an "emotional wreck" after meeting with a judge in Tehran. She is due to attend a Revolutionary court on Sunday.

If previous cases are an indication, Nazanin faces a tough road ahead. "They're placebo cases. They're inventing stuff to hold people. In Nazanin's trial, she was not allowed to speak... it's not trying to be a fair process. It's trying to be a very powerful process, to say 'if you cross us, you'll suffer,'" said Ratcliffe.

In previous interviews, Ratcliffe described his wife as a “hostage.” Her imprisonment has been linked to British debt relating to Iranian arms sales from the 1970s. This week, the Iranian defense ministry demanded London pay up. The ministry said the debt has no connection with any prisoner.

"Since the debt became so clear, we have been asking the government what they think their obligations to Nazanin and the others are – in cases of torture and state hostage taking? Do they recognise yet that is what this is? Is it not their job to keep their promises and keep British citizens safe?" Ratcliffe wrote in his press release.

Tara Sepheri Far, Iran researcher at Human Rights Watch, said it was “cruel” to slap new charges against Nazanin so close to the end of her sentence.

"Nazanin has been prosecuted on a vaguely defined national security charge without due process and sentenced in an unfair trial. It is particularly cruel that now she is finally eligible for clemency under Iranian law, authorities seem to be taking an old case out of the shelf to keep her in prison longer," she told Rudaw English on Wednesday.

Human rights organisation Redress, which works with the Free Nazanin Campaign, has said the UK government must react "firmly and quickly" to the recent decision.

"There is no legal basis for Nazanin's ongoing imprisonment. The revival of a second court case signals a clear intention on the part of Iran to hold Nazanin as a political pawn and threatens to prolong her suffering indefinitely," said Leanna Burnard, REDRESS' Legal Officer.

The end to Nazanin's ordeal may be creeping further from sight, but her family is still hoping for a brighter future.

"Our lives are in limbo but we are not defined by this situation. We had a life before it and we'll have a life after it. We've got to hold onto that,” said Ratcliffe.

'Keeping home alive': The fight to free Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe

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