August 19, 2016
The husband of a British-Iranian woman imprisoned in Iran says she is the victim of a Pasdar ploy to spike Rohani Administration efforts to improve relations with the West.
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, 37, is due to be tried for leading a “foreign-linked hostile network.”
Speaking to the BBC on the couple’s seventh wedding anniversary Sunday, Richard Ratcliffe said his wife was “a proud and loyal Iranian.”
Ratcliffe said her arrest was “so absurd”, adding: “The idea that anyone with a baby could be busy overthrowing the regime is obviously nonsense.”
He said his wife had been under “intense interrogation” for the first two months of her imprisonment and was kept in solitary confinement.
She lost a lot of weight and became very weak, he said, adding: “When she came out of solitary, that was when she couldn’t walk without blackouts and her hair was falling out.”
Ratcliffe said he believes his wife is being used as a pawn in a larger dispute.
“There is definitely a political game going on between different parts of the Iranian government and the Iranian regime, the Revolutionary Guard versus the government, and she’s caught up in that. There have been various attempts by the Iranian government to improve relations with the West and this is almost as provocative as possible to stop that happening.”
The passport belonging to their two-year-old daughter, Gabriella, has been confiscated, he said. The girl is being taken care of by her grandparents in Tehran and Ratcliffe speaks to her daily via Skype.
“There’s a picture in Nazanin’s parents’ living room of our wedding and she’ll go and point to the wedding photo if she wants to speak to daddy or if she wants to speak to mummy,” he said.
“But, of course, she associates where she sees them, so she knows she sees mummy at prison at the moment. She knows that she sees daddy on the telephone.”
He said being away from his daughter was “tough” and “online parenting” was not the same as watching your daughter grow up. However, he said it was a “small mercy” she was with relatives in Iran.
He welcomed the involvement of Prime Minister Theresa May—who “raised concerns” about Zaghari-Ratcliffe and other cases of detained nationals during a phone call last week with President Rohani.
“We are still at the stage where we are not clear what is going on or how the process is working,” Ratcliffe said. “Certainly the fact that Theresa May has raised Nazanin’s case, and that it has reached that level, that can only help the situation.”