ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - As the family and friends of a British Council employee and Iranian national celebrate her acquittal by Iran’s Supreme Court and safe return to the UK, a French-Iranian academic has been sent back to prison in the country that continues to hold the British-Iranian charity worker, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, among other foreign and dual nationals.
Employed for five years in London prior to being arrested in Tehran while visiting family in March 2018, Aras Amiri was released from detention in Evin prison last year and returned to the UK this week, with the British Council confirming the news on Wednesday.
“Amiri has been acquitted by the Supreme Court in Iran of all charges previously made against her, following a successful appeal lodged by her lawyer. She has been freed from detention and has returned to the United Kingdom,” the Council said in a statement.
“We have always refuted the original charges made against Aras. We are very proud of her work in our London office as an arts programme officer supporting a greater understanding and appreciation of Iranian culture in the UK,” the international cultural organisation added.
In May 2019, Amiri was sentenced to ten years on spying charges and "cultural infiltration" in Iran, losing an appeal against the sentence three months later. Iranian authorities did not immediately publicise news of her unexpected release.
News broke on Wednesday that Iran had sent the French-Iranian academic Fariba Adelkhah back to prison in Iran from her home in Tehran, where she had been able to serve her five-year prison term from October 2020.
Adelkhah, who is a specialist in Shiite Islam and research director at the Sciences Po university in Paris, was charged for conspiring against national security in May 2020, having been arrested in June 2019; accusations which her supporters have always denounced as absurd.
Along with the British-Iranian detainee Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who has been held in Iran since her sentencing in 2016, Adelkhah and Amiri are just a handful of the estimated dozen victims held hostage in Iran on dubious charges in recent years, which many interpret as hostage diplomacy.
Other foreign and dual nationals remain in Iran - including, notably, from countries who continue to engage in Vienna’s talks on reviving the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
Those presently detained include Frenchman Benjamin Briere, detained while travelling in May, Nahid Taghavi, a German-Iranian architect, Iranian-American Siamak Namazi, a businessman, his father, Baquer Namazi, a former UNICEF official, Dr. Ahmad Reza Jalali, a Swedish-Iranian physician, Morad Tahbaz, an Iranian-American environmentalist, and Emad Shargi, a US-Iranian.
The 2015 deal, agreed upon by Iran, the US, China, Russia, Britain, France and Germany, offered Tehran sanctions relief in exchange for curbs on its nuclear programme.
Former president Donald Trump withdrew the US from the deal in 2018 and re-imposed sanctions, leading to Iran’s decision to roll back on its commitments, and step up its uranium enrichment capacity.
Several Western negotiators have stated that time is running out to revive the JCPOA.
