Two British-Iranian nationals, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori, who were detained for five and six years respectively, have been released by Tehran and are returning to the UK today, according to Britain’s Foreign Secretary Liz Truss. The two have been transferred to a British team at Imam Khomeini Airport, Tehran, reported Sky News.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a charity worker from Hampstead, northwest London, was arrested at Tehran’s airport in April 2016 and served five years – four in Evin Prison and one under house arrest – after being convicted of plotting the overthrow of Iran’s government. She vehemently denied the charges.
According to her family, local authorities had informed her she was being detained because the UK had failed to pay its outstanding £400m debt to Iran.
After her sentence ended, she was slapped with another year behind bars for spreading propaganda against the Iranian state. Since her release, the woman had been held under house arrest and unable to leave the country.
On Tuesday, UK MP Tulip Siddiq announced that Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe had had her British passport returned.
According to the Fars News Agency, Zaghari-Ratcliffe was handed over to a British team at about 2:15pm local time, with the £400 million ($523,4 million) transferred to Iran by the British side ahead of the release.
The sum amounts to the debt, dating back to the 1970s, that the UK has admitted it owed Iran when it failed to deliver tanks and other defence vehicles bought by Tehran.
Foreign Secretary Liz Truss was cited by Sky News as reiterating that Britain owed Iran a "legitimate debt", while stopping short of confirming whether it had settled.
Retired civil engineer Anoosheh Ashoori, 67, who also holds a British-Iranian passport, was visiting his mother in Iran when he was seized and arrested in 2017. He was jailed for 10 years on charges of spying for Israel’s Mossad and two years for “acquiring illegitimate wealth”, according to Iran’s judiciary.
Before 11:45am GMT, a source close to both families was cited by Reuters as saying the two Iranian-Britons had left Tehran.