Husband of British-Iranian woman held in Iran vows to keep up hunger strike
- Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was arrested in 2016 in Tehran during a visit to her family and convicted of plotting to overthrow the Iranian regime
- Her husband is on a hunger strike to denounce ‘complacency’ of the UK government and its failure to secure the release of his wife
The husband of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian held in Iran since 2016, vowed to maintain a hunger strike he started nearly two weeks ago to denounce the “complacency” of the British government and its failure to secure the release of his wife.
“It’s not a stunt. It’s not a game, a hunger strike, it’s not a light thing,” Richard Ratcliffe said on Friday during a vigil held to support his fast, which he started on Sunday, October 24 outside the Foreign Office in London.
“The status quo is unacceptable,” he said, on the pavement with their daughter Gabriella in front of a display of candles spelling out “Free Nazanin”, three weeks after Zaghari-Ratcliffe lost her appeal against a second jail term in Iran.
A project manager for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the media organisation’s philanthropic wing, Zaghari-Ratcliffe was arrested in 2016 in Tehran during a visit to her family and convicted of plotting to overthrow the Iranian regime – accusations she strenuously denied – and sentenced to five years in prison.
After serving her time, she was sentenced again at the end of April to another year’s imprisonment for taking part in a rally outside the Iranian embassy in London in 2009.
In mid-October, she lost her appeal, with her family fearing she will soon return to prison, which she had been allowed to leave with an electronic bracelet in March 2020 amid Covid-19 concerns.
