As Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has her British passport returned amid reports the UK government has paid a decades-old £400m debt to Iran in a move that could facilitate her release from Tehran, we take a look at the British-Iranian woman’s continuing nightmare, which has lasted nearly six years.
3 April 2016
Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian dual national aged 37, is arrested by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards at Imam Khomeini airport and then held in solitary confinement. She was visiting Iran on holiday to allow her parents to meet her 22-month-old daughter Gabriella. At the time she was employed by Thomson Reuters Foundation, a charity that promotes socio-economic progress. She had previously worked for the BBC as an administrator. The reason for her arrest was not made public but she was later accused of spying – a charge she denied.
9 August 2016
The prime minister, Theresa May, raises concerns about the Zaghari-Ratcliffe in a call with the president of Iran, Hassan Rouhani. The intervention came after Nazanin’s husband, Richard Ratcliffe, criticised ministers for failing to condemn the arrest of his wife.
9 September 2016
Zaghari-Ratcliffe is jailed for five years following a conviction on charges that remained secret.
21 November 2016
Zaghari-Ratcliffe is said to be at “breaking point” after beginning the first of several of hunger strikes. She ends it five days later amid family fears for her health. Ratcliffe continues to question why the government has not done more to secure her release.
April 2017
Zaghari-Ratcliffe loses a final appeal against her sentence. May raises her plight with Iran, according to a Foreign Office statement.
August 2017
Ratcliffe warns that his wife is in a “fragile state” and has been diagnosed with advanced depression. “She’s been talking in very dark terms about what she might do,” he says.
17 October 2017
Tehran’s prosecutor general, Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi, claims Zaghari-Ratcliffe has links with the UK government. He claims she had been training journalists at the BBC and ran an online course that trained participants in encryption.
1 November 2017
The foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, makes a blunder that sets Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s case back, by giving credence to Iran’s false claims about her. He tells the foreign affairs select committee: “When I look at what Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was doing, she was simply teaching people journalism as I understand it.” Zaghari-Ratcliffe had worked for an online BBC World Service Trust journalist training course, but it was a purely administrative role, booking Iranian and other students on courses. The Foreign Office later insists Johnson’s remarks provided “no justifiable basis” for further legal action against Zaghari-Ratcliffe, but it concedes Johnson “could have been clearer”.
12 December 2017
Johnson says he had frank discussions in Tehran with his Iranian counterpart about Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s case. The talks came after Johnson met Ratcliffe to discuss his wife’s plight. But Ratcliffe’s hopes of securing her release before Christmas are dashed.
14 February 2018
Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s family claim her treatment amounts to torture. They later accuse Iran of holding her because of a financial row. The dispute concerns a longstanding £400m debt Britain owes to Iran, the advance payment for a shipment of tanks that was never fully delivered.
21 May 2018
Zaghari-Ratcliffe is told to expect another conviction after she goes to court to face new charges.
3 August 2018
The new foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, promises to do all he can to secure Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s release, after talks with her husband.
23 August 2018
Zaghari-Ratcliffe is temporarily released from prison for the first time since she was arrested, raising hopes that Iran is softening its stance. But after being reunited with her daughter, Zaghari-Ratcliffe is returned to prison after three days. Soon afterwards she collapses in prison.
26 December 2018
Zaghari-Ratcliffe spends her 40th birthday in prison in Iran after Tehran ignores fresh calls for her to be released.
14 January 2019
Zaghari-Ratcliffe goes on a three-day hunger strike to protest against her treatment in prison.
24 April 2019
Iran’s foreign minister, Javad Zarif, raises hope of Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s release by suggesting she could be freed in exchange for an Iranian woman held in Australia. The minister later retracts his remarks.
28 May 2019
The Guardian reveals that the Ministry of Defence has rejected a plea from the Foreign Office to hand over the £400m owed by the UK government to Iran. Iranian authorities have not made an explicit link between the outstanding payment and the fate of Zaghari-Ratcliffe, but in private Iranians cite the £400m as one reason for the lack of trust between Tehran and London.
15 June 2019
Both Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and her husband stage hunger strikes in protest at her continuing detention. At the end of the 15-day protest, Ratcliffe calls on Johnson to take responsibility for the mistakes he made in the handling of the case. He says: “Not just the gaffe – the failure to apologise afterwards clearly made things worse.”
25 September 2019
Johnson, now prime minister, calls for the immediate release of Zaghari-Ratcliffe and other dual nationals imprisoned in Iran during a meeting with Rouhani at the UN in New York.
29 December 2019
Zaghari-Ratcliffe goes on hunger strike in solidarity with Kylie Moore-Gilbert, an academic also being held in Iran.
3 January 2020
The US assassination of the Iranian general Qassem Suleimani prompts Zaghari-Ratcliffe to have panic attacks over fears of Iranian reprisals.
23 January 2020
Ratcliffe and Gabriella, now five, meet the prime minister in Downing Street with no sign of a breakthrough.
29 February 2020
Zaghari-Ratcliffe is suspected of contracting coronavirus following an outbreak at Evin prison, where she is being held. The jail refuses to test her.
17 March 2020
Zaghari-Ratcliffe, is temporarily released for a second time but is required to wear an ankle tag and not move more than 300 metres from her parents’ home. The temporary release is later extended, raising hope of a clemency deal.
20 May 2020
Zaghari-Ratcliffe is told she can remain out of prison until a decision is made on whether to grant her clemency.
25 August 2020
Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s lawyers accuse the British government of deliberately delaying steps necessary to secure her release – including payment of the £400m – for fear of offending the Trump administration.
8 September 2020
Iran’s state media says Zaghari-Ratcliffe is due in court to face a new unspecified charge.
26 April 2021
An Iranian court sentences Zaghari-Ratcliffe to a one-year jail term and bans her from leaving the country for a year after. Her lawyer Hojjat Kermani says an appeal is being lodged on the basis that the charges were laid out of time.
23 September 2021
Iran demands that Britain repay its £400m debt and take serious steps to lift sanctions, in a meeting with the foreign secretary, Liz Truss. The meeting takes place on Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s 2,000th day in detention in Iran. She is staying with her mother in Iran, pending an appeal against her additional sentence of one year.
24 October 2021
Ratcliffe begins another hunger strike outside the Foreign Office in an attempt to persuade the UK foreign secretary to do more to bring his wife back from detention. He ends it after 21 days.
10 December 2021
UK government officials have travelled to Tehran to discuss legal ways to pay Britain’s £400m debt to Iran, the Iranian ambassador to London says.
15 February 2022
Truss says she hopes Britain will soon be in a position to pay the £400m to Iran, according to an Iranian account of a phone call between her and her Tehran counterpart. The two countries insist that the debt has always been treated as independent of the fate of Zaghari-Ratcliffe.
15 March 2022
Zaghari-Ratcliffe has had her British passport returned. Her MP, Tulip Siddiq, tweets: “I also understand that there is a British negotiating team in Tehran right now.”
16 March 2022
Zaghari-Ratcliffe and another British-Iranian detainee, Anoosheh Ashoori, are released from detention and are on their way back to the UK, her MP, Tulip Siddiq, says.
