Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe (née Zaghari; Persian: نازنین زاغری; born 26 December 1978) is an Iranian-British dual citizen who was detained in Iran from 3 April 2016 to 16 March 2022 under charges of espionage for the British government. In early September 2016, she was sentenced to five years in prison after being found guilty of "plotting to topple the Iranian government". She was temporarily released on 17 March 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic in Iran, while being monitored.The prosecutor general of Tehran stated in October 2017 that Zaghari-Ratcliffe was being held for running "a BBC Persian online journalism course which was aimed at recruiting and training people to spread propaganda against Iran". Zaghari-Ratcliffe has always denied the spying charges against her, and her husband maintains that his wife "was imprisoned as leverage for a debt owed by the UK over its failure to deliver tanks to Iran in 1979."On 7 March 2021, her original sentence ended, but she was scheduled to face a second set of charges on 14 March. On 26 April, she was found guilty of propaganda activities against the government and sentenced to one year in prison. On 16 October 2021, her appeal was rejected by the Iranian court. Zaghari-Ratcliffe was released on 16 March 2022 and returned to the United Kingdom the next day.

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