An Iranian court has sentenced the British-Iranian dual national Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe to a one-year jail term and banned her from leaving the country for a year after, according to her lawyer.
She had been charged with attending a demonstration outside the Iranian embassy in 2009 and speaking to a BBC Persian journalist at the gathering.
Her lawyer, Hojjat Kermani, said an appeal was being lodged on the basis that the charges had been laid out of time.
Timeline
Imprisonment of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe in Iran
Arrest in Tehran
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is arrested at Imam Khomeini airport as she is trying to return to Britain after a holiday visiting family with her daughter, Gabriella.
Release campaign begins
Sentenced
Hunger strike
Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s health deteriorates after she spends several days on hunger strike in protest at her imprisonment.
Boris Johnson gives statement used against her in court
The foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, tells a parliamentary select committee: “When we look at what [she] was doing, she was simply teaching people journalism.” Four days after his comments, Zaghari-Ratcliffe is returned to court where Johnson’s statement is cited in evidence against her. Her employer, the Thomson Reuters Foundation, denies she has ever trained journalists, and her family maintain she was in Iran on holiday. Johnson is eventually forced to apologise for the “distress and anguish” his comments caused the family.
Health concerns
Richard Ratcliffe reveals that his wife has fears for her health after lumps were found in her breasts that required an ultrasound scan. He says she is “on the verge of a nervous breakdown”.
Hunger strike
Zaghari-Ratcliffe again goes on hunger strike, this time in protest at the withdrawal of her medical care.
Diplomatic protection
Jeremy Hunt, now the foreign secretary, takes the unusual step of granting her diplomatic protection – a move that raises her case from a consular matter to the level of a dispute between the two states.
Hunger strike in London
Richard Ratcliffe joins his wife in a new hunger strike campaign. He fasts outside the Iranian embassy in London as she begins a third hunger strike in prison.
Daughter returns to London
Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s daughter, Gabriella, who has lived with her grandparents in Tehran and regularly visited her mother in jail over the last three years, returns to London to start school.
Temporary release during Covid pandemic
Amid the threat of the coronavirus pandemic, Zaghari-Ratcliffe is temporarily released from prison, but she is required to wear an ankle brace and not move more than 300 metres from her parents’ home.
New charges
Iranian state media report that she will appear in court to face new and unspecified charges. In the end, a weekend court appearance on a new charge of waging propaganda against the state, which could leave her incarcerated for another 10 years, is postponed without warning. Zaghari-Ratcliffe says: “People should not underestimate the level of stress. People tell me to calm down. You don’t understand what it is like. Nothing is calm.”
Freed – but back in court
Zaghari-Ratcliffe faces a second set of charges in Iran’s revolutionary court. She is freed from house arrest at the end of her five-year prison sentence, but because she has been summoned to court again on the other charge, she has not been allowed to leave the country to return to her family.
New sentence
Zaghari-Ratcliffe is sentenced to another year in prison after being found guilty of spreading “propaganda against the system” for participating in a protest in front of the Iranian embassy in London in 2009.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe has already spent five years in jail, including many months in solitary confinement, on separate spying charges. She was first arrested in April 2016 after she visited Tehran with her daughter Gabriella, then almost two years old, to visit her parents.
The one-year travel ban is sequential to the jail term, meaning Zaghari-Ratcliffe will not be able to leave Iran for two years.
The second set of charges were announced last year and her trial was held more than a month ago. She was told she would be given the sentence within seven working days, but a delay followed.
Her lawyers argued no new evidence was produced in the second trial that had not been available to the Iranian security services at the first trial.
Boris Johnson, the UK prime minister, said the British government “would be working very hard” to secure her release.
“I don’t think it is right that Nazanin should be sentenced to any more time in jail,” he said. “I think it is wrong she is there in the first place, and we will be working very hard to secure her release from Iran, her ability to return to her family here in the UK, just as we work for all dual national cases in Iran.
“The government will not stop, we will redouble our efforts, and we are working with our American friends on the issue as well.”
The UK, France and Germany are in talks, being held in Vienna, alongside the US, Russia and China to negotiate a way for the US and Iran to return to full compliance with the nuclear deal signed by Iran in 2015.
The UK has been reluctant to raise human rights issues in the context of the Vienna talks, and instead treated them as self-standing negotiations.
Another British-Iranian dual national, who according to the Foreign Office does not want publicity, is due to face charges on Wednesday, as is a German-Iranian dual national.
Tulip Siddiq, Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s local MP, said: “This is a terrible blow for Nazanin and her family, who have been hoping and praying that she would soon be free to come home. It is devastating to see Nazanin once again being abusively used as a bargaining chip.
“We’ve been told the government has been working behind the scenes to secure Nazanin’s release. These efforts have clearly failed and we deserve an urgent explanation from minsters about what has happened.”
The foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, said: “This is a totally inhumane and wholly unjustified decision. We continue to call on Iran to release Nazanin immediately so she can return to her family in the UK. We continue to do all we can to support her.”