the times | Friday March 18 2022 2GM 17
News
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe wants to
focus on being a full-time mother now
that she is back in Britain, although her
employer has said her job is open and
promoted her while she was in jail.
The British-Iranian aid worker spent
her first night back in the UK in six years
beside her husband Richard Ratcliffe
and their seven-year-old daughter
Gabriella at a government-run safe
house, where they are expected to stay
until at least the start of next week.
Ratcliffe, 45, told The Times that the
family had no specific recovery plan but
acknowledged that it was “probably
time to start developing one”. He said
that an eventual campaigning role re-
mained a possibility but that his wife’s
immediate focus was on her family.
“People come out with an extra will
to make up for lost time and to stop
others having to battle against the bad
guys that they feel are responsible,”
he said. “And that can take different
directions. While I’m sure she’s happy
today, I can’t tell where her head will be
in six months. I’m sure she’s feeling a lot
less angry today than she was a week
ago. There’s nothing like freedom for
changing your perspective.”
At the time of her 2016 arrest for alle-
gedly trying to overthrow the Iranian
regime, Zaghari-Ratcliffe, 43, was a
project co-ordinator for the Thomson
Reuters Foundation. Antonio Zappulla,
the charity’s chief executive, said that it
had been “surreal” to see her return. He
said: “We kept her post open and never
really replaced Nazanin. In fact, we
promoted her when she was away.”
After Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s arrest
Gabriella remained with her maternal
grandparents in Iran, where she forgot
how to speak English and occasionally
visited her mother in prison. She re-
turned to the UK to start school in 2019,
accompanied by Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s
brother Mohammed, who has lived
with the family in their two-bedroom
flat in West Hampstead, north London.
Tulip Siddiq, the Labour MP who
campaigned for Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s
release, said yesterday of Gabriella:
“When she heard mummy was coming
home she thought her father was joking.
She said to her dad, ‘You’re pulling my
leg.’ She reconfirmed with me when she
saw me and said, ‘Is it true mummy’s
coming home?’ My heart just broke.
Then she started playing the piano and
singing and dancing. That was lovely.”
Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh
Ashoori, 67, a British-Iranian retired
civil engineer, were released after
Britain agreed to pay a decades-old
debt of £393.8 million to Iran relating to
a contract for undelivered tanks. The
pair flew from Iran to Oman and then
to RAF Brize Norton, Oxfordshire,
landing at 1.08am yesterday. In a video
filmed by Ashoori’s daughter Elika, the
families watch as the pair step off the
plane. “Is that Mummy?” asks
Gabriella. “That’s my dad,” Elika says.
Gabriella shouts: “Mummy!”
The families were reunited inside.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s sister-in-law Dr
Rebecca Ratcliffe, a GP, told Toda y on
BBC Radio 4: “Gabriella slept between
Richard and Nazanin for the first time
in six years.” She said that the trio were
going to need time to “try and work to
each other’s rhythms”, adding: “They’re
not going to go back to where they were.”
Barbara Ratcliffe said that her
daughter-in-law was doing “just fine”.
She said: “We watched the plane the
whole way home on a flight tracker. But
we did not let ourselves be jubilant until
she got on the plane in Oman. Well, I
didn’t until she was over the English
Channel.”
Freeing Nazanin, letters, page 30
Pompeo accuses Britain of
paying Iran blood money
Henry Zeffman Associate Political EditorPresident Trump’s former secretary of
state has said that Britain paid “blood
money” to Iran for the release of
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoos-
heh Ashoori.
Mike Pompeo, who also led the CIA
under Trump, said that the £393.8 mil-
lion paid before the release of the two
British-Iranian citizens would be used
to “terrorise Israel, UK and [the] US”.
Pompeo, who is considering running
for president in 2024, wrote on Twitter:
“Sadly, Iran, w/Russia & China, is
rolling the West. Appeasement feels
good until it fails — it always does.”
The British government has insisted
that the debt, owed as part of a col-
lapsed 1970s deal to supply tanks, was
paid in “parallel” with the negotiations
about Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Ashoori,
rather than as a price for their release.
Ministers say that the money can on-
ly be used by Iran for humanitarian
purposes, although this was vociferous-
ly disputed by Tehran. Saeed Khatibza-
deh, a spokesman for the Iranian for-
eign ministry, said: “The money is fully
and definitely at Iran’s disposal and how
the reimbursed sum of money would be
spent also follows the decision of theIslamic Republic of Iran, and the British
side, or any other side, has no right to
meddle in this issue.”
The government is hoping for a
“thaw” in relations with Iran. A senior
government source told The Times that
if the agreement on detainees were fol-
lowed soon by a new nuclear deal “that
does leave the path much more clear for
a new period of less frosty relations”.
However, Tom Tugendhat, the Con-
servative chairman of the Commons
foreign affairs committee, said: “We
need to make sure that our actions don’t
encourage the Iranian government to
take more hostages as they have done
with many other countries in order to
extract payments or confessions.”
There have been suggestions that
Iran could help to solve the energy
crisis. David Lammy, the shadow
foreign secretary, warned against such
an approach. He said: “Rather than fo-
cusing on short-termist shifts to other
authoritarian states to protect our
energy security we need to move deci-
sively away from fossil fuels and onto
clean, cheap, homegrown renewables.”
A government source said that there
was not “any serious short or medium-
term prospect of us starting to take
Iranian oil again”.Prisoner left behind is being used as pawn, say family
Mario LedwithThe family of a British prisoner in Iran
found out he would not be returning
with Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and
Anoosheh Ashoori from media reports.
Relatives of Morad Tahbaz, 66, say he
has been abandoned by ministers. His
sister, Tarane Ahbaz, 67, said: “We were
in touch with them right up until two
days before, when they told us there
was great hope that all three were com-ing together. There was this build-up
and then suddenly silence. The big co-
nundrum now is that they have paid
this debt and where does that leave my
brother? What card do they have to
play? You get a feeling after all this that
he is a pawn.”
Tahbaz, a London-born business-
man and conservationist with British,
US and Iranian citizenship, was arres-
ted in 2018 with a group from the Per-
sian Wildlife Heritage Foundation andcharged with spying for America. The
father of three has been released under
house arrest and the UK government
has vowed to secure his release. Iran is
treating him as an American.
His relatives said he remains under
guard in a two-bedroom flat with his
wife, Vida, 61, who has also had her
passport confiscated by the Iranian re-
gime, and her elderly parents, with no
liberty to speak to the outside world.
US politicians accused Liz Truss, theforeign secretary, of reneging on a deal
to have American political prisoners
freed from Iran at the same time. Jim
Himes, a congressman who has fought
for Tahbaz’s release, said: “Sadly, it ap-
pears the United Kingdom has struck
its own deal and that’s concerning.”
James Cleverly, the Foreign Office
minister, told the BBC: “We will
continue to work to secure his release
and, obviously, we work in close co-
ordination with the US on these issues.”Nazanin to be a mother first in new life
Mario Ledwith
Catherine Philp
Diplomatic Correspondent
Nazanin Zaghari-
Ratcliffe with
Anoosheh Ashoori
after landing in
Britain and, below,
reunited with her
husband Richard
and daughter
GabriellaREUTERS