'Ripple of freedom' for jailed British mother in Iran after Boris Johnson visit
1 min read
Iran has postponed a fresh court hearing for jailed British mother Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe after Boris Johnson paid a visit to the country.
The Foreign Secretary spoke “forthrightly” about the case and a number of other topics in a head-to-head with Iranian president Hassan Rouhani yesterday, according to the Foreign Office.
Initially the visit appeared to have made little progress on the case of Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who was jailed in Tehran some 20 months ago on accusations of plotting against the government.
But a hearing scheduled for yesterday - which could have seen her sentence doubled to ten years after a gaffe by Mr Johnson - was postponed, according to a senior court official.
Her husband Richard told the Guardian: “I thought that if the Foreign Secretary had a good Saturday, we might have a good Sunday, with a court case postponed.
“And so it has come to pass. Today is one of the good days in the past 20 months.
“This weekend we had our first ripple of freedom. We were fearing a bad day and we haven’t had that, which makes it a good day. I guess we will see what the next few days mean.”
The hearing was set after Mr Johnson told MPs on a Commons committee Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe had been teaching journalists in Iran when she had in fact been visiting family.
