December 25 2020
For the fifth year in a row, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe spent Christmas Day and her birthday, which is the day after Christmas, detained in Iran. Only she isn’t merely a prisoner, her husband, Richard Ratcliffe, says; she’s a hostage. “There has been a real reluctance on the part of the British government and the wider world to call out Iran’s hostage taking.”
In mid-December, the UK parliamentary foreign affairs select committee also called for the government to formally describe the Iranian practice of detaining British-Iranian nationals such as Zaghari-Ratcliffe as state “hostage taking.”
British citizens are being used as “bargaining chips and leverage” in matters of diplomacy, said Tom Tugendhat, who chairs the committee, adding that the UK government needs to toughen its approach to negotiating their release.
In an interview with the Observer, Ratcliffe welcomed this suggestion and the acknowledgment that the government’s current approach is not working for Nazanin and other hostages. “You cannot have a functional relationship with another country if it’s not safe to go and visit granny,” he said, referring to the family holiday his wife was on with daughter Gabriella in April 2016 when she was arrested by the Pasdaran.
He backed the select committee’s calls for the government to develop new tools for securing the release of detainees and to work with UN allies to develop a new protocol to hold state hostage-takers accountable.
In his opinion, the Foreign Office’s priority at the moment is to avoid any action that could lead to negative consequences or “fallout” for the hostages. “But I think inaction can lead to negative consequences.”
He is angry that the British ambassador won’t visit his wife: “I do not see any decent reason why they won’t do it. I can’t see any downside for us.”
She has been living with her parents in Tehran since March, when she was temporarily released from Evin prison as Covid infections spread. She wears an ankle bracelet and must limit her movements to within 300 meters of their home.
“The most important thing, when there has been hostage-taking,” said Ratcliffe, “is getting access to the hostage. You have to break the seclusion. And, if you haven’t got access after negotiating for nearly five years and granting Nazanin diplomatic protection, there’s a huge problem.”
Iran’s position holds that Britain can’t have consular access because it doesn’t recognize dual nationality and she is, therefore, purely an Iranian national. Ratcliffe calls that nothing short of a “scam,” and the British government knows it, he says.
When six year-old Gabriella – who is currently obsessed with dolls – opens her presents on Christmas morning, her mother will not be there to share the moment with her.
The family keeps in touch via video calls – they normally speak twice a day. “Just before we go to school, we’ll call Nazanin and she’ll watch Gabriella brushing her hair. It’s one of the things she was able to do for Gabriella in the prison visiting room. It’s a real mother-daughter thing for Nazanin.”
His own powerful bond with his daughter – painfully undermined during the three years Gabriella lived in Iran with her grandparents and stopped speaking English – has been a great comfort. “The strength of her cuddles has improved immeasurably over the past year. There’s a tightness to her squeeze now.”
But he confesses that sole-parenting a six-year-old during lockdown, while holding down a job and simultaneously campaigning for his wife’s release, has not been easy. “The way I had coped was by putting things in boxes. All those boxes got washed away, and I was just left with a big mess in my living room.”
He is worried that, no matter what he does, Gabriella will grow up feeling she was abandoned by her parents. “She will sometimes ask: ‘Why did Mummy go?’ or: ‘Why my mummy?’” Once, he says, she was even more blunt and asked: “Why did you marry an Iranian?”
As for Nazanin, she has had to live with the possibility of being sent back to prison at a moment’s notice. “I use the term mental torture, because that’s what it has been,” said Ratcliffe.” Last month, she was told to pack a bag for prison. Ten men turned up in two vans to take her to court for a fresh trial and started filming her for a propaganda video. “At that point, the [UK] government recognized this was a new form of abuse, and condemned it in the strongest terms,” he said.
He thinks that condemnation made all the difference: the court hearing was adjourned, without a clear date for its recommencement, and Nazanin was allowed to return to her parents’ home.
“I am firmly of the view that the more clearly we put down red lines, the better. The British government needs to show, clearly, that they’ve got Nazanin’s back.” He wants the British ambassador to visit her, stand next to her and assert, unambiguously, that she is British. “And that is something the government is still reluctant to do.”