Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe given 'torturous' treatment in Iran, says UK
The UK on Sunday denounced Iran's treatment of imprisoned dual national Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe as "torture," after she was given a new sentence this week.
The Islamic Republic was playing "a cat and mouse game" with the aid worker, UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab told the BBC.
"Nazanin is held unlawfully in my view, as a matter of international law. I think she's being treated in the most abusive, tortuous way," he said.
"I think it amounts to torture the way she's being treated, and there is a very clear, unequivocal obligation on the Iranians to release her."
The British-Iranian national has been held in the country since 2016; in late April, she was sentenced to a year in jail and banned from leaving Iran for a further 12 months.
Her husband Richard Ratcliffe has argued that his wife's imprisonment was being used by Iran to apply diplomatic pressure, a characterisation Raab said it was "difficult to argue against".
"It is clear that she is subjected to a cat and mouse game that the Iranians, or certainly part of the Iranian system, engage with, and they try and use her for leverage on the UK," he told the BBC.
Decades-long debts
Ratcliffe has linked his wife's detention to a British debt dating back over 40 years for army tanks paid for by Iran's former ruler, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
When the monarch was ousted in the 1979 revolution, the UK refused to deliver the tanks to the new Islamic republic. A court case over the £400m ($550m) debt has been repeatedly delayed in London.
Writing for the news site Declassified UK on Saturday, Ratcliffe said his wife's case had "long been in the shadow of the vagaries of this court case in London, and in the hands of powerful, unaccountable old men still arguing over their money".
"What does it mean when a national debt can be turned into a private tragedy, for which the UK government declares itself to have no safeguarding obligations?" he wrote.
"Particularly when all the while the Iranian authorities turn more and more private individuals into national commodities? When hostage diplomacy is growing worldwide?"
Though the UK has admitted the money it owes Iran, the government has cited various factors holding up the payment.
A number of reports have said the country is constrained by US sanctions in its ability to pay the debt back, but Raab denied this on Sunday.
"That is not actually the thing that's holding us up at the moment, it's the wider context," said Raab.
He highlighted ongoing negotiations with the country over its nuclear programme and upcoming presidential elections.
Middle East Eye propose une couverture et une analyse indépendantes et incomparables du Moyen-Orient, de l’Afrique du Nord et d’autres régions du monde. Pour en savoir plus sur la reprise de ce contenu et les frais qui s’appliquent, veuillez remplir ce formulaire [en anglais]. Pour en savoir plus sur MEE, cliquez ici [en anglais].
