Husband of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe calls on Boris Johnson to meet with daughter after return from Iran
3 min read
The husband of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has called on Boris Johnson to meet the couple's five-year-old daughter after she returned to the UK after more than three years in Iran.
Richard Ratcliffe urged the Prime Minister to meet with him and Gabriella in order to discuss the future of his wife's case.
The youngster has been living with her grandparents since her mother was imprisoned by Iran's Revolutionary Guard on spying charges in 2016, an allegation the family deny.
But the couple requested Gabriella be allowed to leave Iran to begin schooling in the UK.
Speaking at a press conference in Parliament on Friday, Mr Ratcliffe said Mr Johnson had "another chance" to be the family's "hero" by securing his wife's release.
"Well, I will be looking to meet with him as soon as possible with Gabriella. He obviously when he was Foreign Secretary tried to solve this issue," he told reporters.
"He went to Tehran and didn't manage it. Now he is more powerful.
"Now, I appreciate he is quite distracted and has a lot of other things going on but actually this is an area where he could really make a difference. We looked to him once before to be our hero and now he's got another chance."
Mr Johnson was heavily criticised during his time as Foreign Secretary after he mistakenly told MPs that Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe had been in Iran "teaching journalists".
The comments were later used during a trial by Iranian authorities against Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe.
But Mr Ratcliffe said since announcing he was running for his party's leadership, Mr Johnson had been "kept at arms length" by advisors.
"We have requested to meet and will again now Gabriella is back, and not had an answer yet. I think my sense of it... it feels a bit like in the leadership campaign where it was almost like his advisers were keeping him at arm's length," he said.
"Let's be honest, we are a bad news story for the Prime Minister. We might be a good news story one day but at the moment we are a bad news story. So, I think his advisers were trying to keep him away."
Gabriella, who brought a "Welcome Home" cake to the Commons press conference, has almost entirely lost her ability to communicate in English having only been able to speak to her father during phone calls or on occasional visits.
"It was a hard goodbye for Nazanin and all her family. But let us hope this homecoming unlocks another," Mr Ratcliffe added.
"I spoke to Nazanin yesterday and she was reasonably distraught. One of the things she really didn't want to happen was her daughter to leave while she was still in prison."
Meanwhile, the family's MP Tulip Siddiq called on the Government to settle a historic £400m debt connected to a failed deal to sell tanks to the Iranian regime in 1979, which she claimed was linked with Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe's continued imprisonment.
"Iran must end their hostage diplomacy and release my innocent constituent. Britain should also solve its long-running debt issue with Iran," she said.
"Nazanin is at breaking point, and today is yet another reminder that she has been failed at the very highest levels of government."
She added: "I have now dealt with three Prime Ministers, three Foreign Secretarys and four Middle East ministers about this case on Nazanin Zagharri Ratcliffe, every single one of those politicians have looked me in the eye and said that this has nothing to do with the debt that we owe Iran.
"But we know that's not true. We owe Iran £400m pounds because of the sale of tanks that happened many years ago. Nazanin and her family have been told by Revolutionary Guards that the debt is linked to her imprisonment."
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