PRESS RELEASE
For immediate release 23rd January 2017
Confirmation in Iran of the five-year jail sentence on the young London mother Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has been condemned as ‘outrageous’ by Struan Stevenson, a lecturer on Middle East politics and former British member of European Parliament. Speaking in Scotland Mr Stevenson said: “Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was arrested at Imam Khomeini in Tehran last April as she attempted to return to the UK following a holiday with her two-year-old daughter Gabriella. She is a 38-year-old charity worker, from Hampstead, northwest London, married to Richard Ratcliffe. She has dual British/Iranian nationality, but because Iran does not recognise dual nationalities, those detained cannot receive consular assistance.
“She was sentenced to five years imprisonment by Iran’s revolutionary court on ‘secret charges’, apparently relating to an alleged attempt by her to organise the ‘soft-overthrow’ of the Iranian regime, whatever that is supposed to mean. Reports from the regime’s media suggest that this sentence has now been finalised by the Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi.”
Stevenson continued: “Nazanin’s toddler, Gabriella, remains in Iran with members of her family after authorities seized her passport. In a recent phone conversation, she told her husband that Revolutionary Guards officials said she must choose between having her daughter, Gabriella, stay with her in Tehran’s Evin prison for up to three days a week, or sign a document saying she does not want the “right to be with her young daughter”, basically relinquishing custody of her own daughter. She told her husband that both options were clearly unacceptable. According to Amnesty International UK, Evin prison authorities imposed this cruel choice in an attempt to counter negative publicity caused by the 37-year-old being separated from her toddler. Nazanin’s husband Richard has branded her sentence as “a punishment without a crime” and said she was struggling with being separated from her daughter and suffering hair and weight loss as a result of her ordeal.”
Struan Stevenson continued: “Serial abuse of human rights has become a daily fact of life in this medieval, theocratic regime, under the supposedly ‘moderate’ presidency of the smiling Hassan Rouhani. More than 70 people have been hanged so far this year, many of them in public; at least 2700 have been executed since he took office three years ago and yet the West continues to seek ways of securing commercial contracts with this evil and oppressive regime. The Justice Minister appointed by Rouhani is Mostafa Pour Mohammadi, a man who has publicly admitted and gloried in his key role in the murder of 30,000 political opponents, mostly from the People’s Mojahedin’s of Iran (PMOI or MEK) opposition group in 1988. It is unacceptable that the UK can simply sit back and wring its hands in dismay at this treatment of a UK citizen and her child.
“There must be immediate and public condemnation of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s sentence and demands for her urgent release. She was originally sentenced the day after Britain restored our UK embassy and ambassador in Iran, supposedly because we wished to resume normal relations. This sickening verdict by the Iranian regime proves that there can never be a normal, civilized relationship and Britain should now threaten to sever diplomatic ties with the country unless Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe is released.”
Note: Struan Stevenson was a Member of the European Parliament representing Scotland (1999-2014). He was President of the Parliament’s Delegation for Relations with Iraq (2009- 2014) and Chair of Friends of a Free Iran Intergroup (Caucus) from 2004-2014. He is now President of the European Iraqi Freedom Association (EIFA).
