Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, born on the 26th December 1978. She is a British-Iranian citizen, who has been detained in an Iranian prison since 3rd April 2016. She was temporarily released on the 17th March this year.
She was sentenced to five years imprisonment for allegedly ‘plotting to topple the Iranian government’. Zaghari-Ratcliffe was a project manager with Thompson Reuters Foundation, when she travelled to Iran to celebrate Nowruz (iranian New Year), with her family. She was arrested as she and her 22 month old daughter were about to board a flight back to the UK. Her daughter stayed with her grandparents in Iran until 2019, when she returned to the UK to live with her father.
There have been many calls for her release from The United Nations, the US Congress, the Canadian Parliament and the European Parliament. On 7th May 2016 Nazanin’s husband Richard Ratcliffe launched a petition to have her released, so that she could return with her daughter to the UK. The petition now stands at 2.2 million signatures.
In June 2019 both she and her husband went on a 15 day hunger strike, to protest at her imprisonment. In February 2020 as the Corona Virus pandemic spread to Iran,she was suspected of falling ill with Covid 19, although this was dismissed by the Iranian government, describing reports of her infection as ‘propaganda’.
On the 17th March 2020 she was temporarily freed for two weeks until 4th April.