Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe: I should have been freed six years ago

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has said it should never have taken the government so long to secure her release.

Appearing at a press conference in Westminster, she said: “What’s happened now should have happened six years ago. I shouldn’t have been in prison for six years.”

The British-Iranian was speaking for the first time since her dramatic return to the UK last week.

She was freed after spending six years of detention in Iran.

Her release came after the UK government paid a £400m debt to Iran dating back to the 1970s, although both governments have said the two issues should not be linked.

Speaking from Portcullis House, Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe took issue with the credit her husband, Richard Ratcliffe, had granted Foreign Secretary Liz Truss for her release.

“I have seen five foreign secretaries change over the course of six years,” she said.

“How many foreign secretaries does it take for someone to come home? It should have been one of them eventually.

“We all know… how I came home. It should have happened exactly six years ago.”

She said she had been told by Iranian authorities shortly after her arrest that they wanted “something off the Brits” and that they would not let her go until they had got it.

Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe thanked her husband, who has campaigned tirelessly over the last six years, and all those who have worked for her release.

She described the moment of getting off the plane last week and seeing her daughter Gabriella again as “precious”.

“I had been waiting for that moment for such a long time,” she said.

“It was lovely to get to hold her, to braid her hair and to brush her hair. That was a moment that I really, really missed.”

She added that she was now looking forward to getting to know Gabriella better and doing everyday things like taking her to school.

Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a project manager for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, was detained while visiting her parents in Iran in April 2016 and accused of plotting to overthrow the Iranian government.

She was given a five-year sentence in September 2016 and in April of last year was given another year on charges of propaganda against the government.

She has always said that she was only in Iran to visit family.

Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe also used the event to draw attention to the plight of other dual nationals still detained in Iran.

Morad Tahbaz, who has British, Iranian, and American citizenship, remains in detention, and there are numerous people from other countries who are being held on various allegations of working to undermine the Iranian regime.

“I believe that the meaning of freedom is never going to be complete until such time that all of us who are unjustly detained in Iran are reunited with our families,” Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe said.

“There are so many other people – we don’t know their names – who have been suffering in prison.”

Another British-Iranian national, Anoosheh Ashoori, was released at the same time as Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe.

Mr Tahbaz’s daughter, Roxanne, also appeared at the conference, and said her family felt her father had been “abandoned and left behind” in Iran.

She said they had been told by the Foreign Office that Mr Tahbaz would be included in any deal to release hostages in Iran, and called on the prime minister and the foreign secretary to continue to work for his release.