June 28, 2019
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and her British husband have begun dry hunger strikes in Tehran and London in an effort to pressure the Iranian government to free her.
It took a week for the Iranian government to respond, but it roundly dismissed the hunger strikes.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Musavi told reporters June 24, “She has been convicted on security charges and is spending her [five-year] sentence in prison.”
He repeated that Iran does not recognize dual citizenship, so concerns expressed by her British husband, Richard Ratcliffe and the UK government, are irrelevant. “Mrs. Zaghari is an Iranian,” he said.
In London, Iranian Ambassador Hamid Baeidinejad also picked a fight with the husband. Baeidinejad noted that Ratcliffe said he had been denied a visa to go to Iran and visit his wife. But Baeidinejad said Ratcliffe had never even applied for a visa.
The ambassador also said Ratcliffe had falsely also told the media that his five-year-old daughter, Gabriella, had been barred from leaving Iran. Gabriella is staying with her grandparents in Tehran.
Ratcliffe is conducting his hunger strike on the sidewalk in front of the Iranian Embassy in London. The ambassador complained that crowds coming to see Ratcliffe had blocked the entryway to the embassy.
The husband and wife started their hunger strikes June 15. They are “dry” hunger strikes, meaning they take no food but do drink beverages. Without water, humans die quickly, but without food they can last many weeks.
Ratcliffe said his wife “had vowed that if we passed Gab-riella’s fifth birthday with her still inside, then she would do something—to mark to both governments that enough is enough. This really has gone on too long.”
Mrs. Zaghari-Ratcliffe was arrested at Imam Khomeini Airport in April 2016 as she was trying to leave Tehran to return to her husband. She has 22 months remaining on her sentence.