The family of the imprisoned British-Iranian woman Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe have said they will no longer press for her to be granted temporary releases from jail.

The decision reflects the tremendous strain she suffered from having to return to prison last month. It was revealed on Saturday in an open letter from her husband Richard Ratcliffe to Muhammad Javad Zarif, the Iranian foreign minister.

Ratcliffe was responding to news that his wife had been taken to hospital suffering from a panic attack last week following her re-imprisonment only a few days after being granted a temporary release from jail. Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who works for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, was originally given a five-year jail sentence in 2016 after she was accused of spying. She has insisted she was on holiday.



The strain suffered by Zaghari-Ratcliffe and her family after her recent release and then rapid re-imprisonment is revealed in Richard Ratcliffe’s letter. “A week ago, Nazanin was suddenly released from Evin prison on furlough. She had been given 10 minutes’ notice before she was out on the street, and had used a passerby’s phone to call for family help. I was awoken to see her smiling face on Skype – the first time I had seen her in over two years.”



But within three days, Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who holds dual British and Iranian citizenship, was sent back to prison. “It was a day of cruel disbelief – different Iranian officials gave different messages, but it was back to black all the same,” states Ratcliffe.

“Nazanin called me. She said she wished she had never been released.”

Muhammad Javad Zarif, the Iranian foreign minister, has been told of the strain suffered by Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe. Photograph: Raul Martinez/EPA

Shortly after her return to jail, Zaghari-Ratcliffe was taken to prison hospital when she suffered a panic attack.

Throughout his wife’s imprisonment, Ratcliffe has mounted a resolute campaign to have her released. “I have been accused of megaphone diplomacy – but a clear voice is a family’s only protection,” he states in his letter. “We crossed a threshold this week. I have told the Foreign Office we will not be pushing for furlough again.”

Profile Who is Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe? Show Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is an Iranian-British dual national who has been jailed in Iran since April 2016. She has been accused of attempting to orchestrate a “soft overthrow” of the Islamic Republic. She and her three-year-old daughter, Gabriella, were about to return to the UK from Iran after a family visit when she was arrested. Since then, she has spent most of her time in Evin prison in Tehran, separated from her daughter. In January 2019 she went on hunger strike for three days in protest against being denied medical care in Tehran’s Evin prison. In March, the UK Foreign Office granted her diplomatic protection, a step that raised her case from a consular matter to the level of a dispute between the two states. Zaghari-Ratcliffe worked for BBC Media Action between February 2009 and October 2010 before moving to Thomson Reuters Foundation, the news agency’s charitable arm, as a project manager. Her family has always said that she was in Iran on holiday. Photograph: Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe/PA

Ratcliffe also reveals that he had asked the Foreign Office minister Alistair Burt, who is in Tehran, to press Iranian foreign office officials to explain what is going on. “This week, the new UK foreign secretary [Jeremy Hunt] was increasingly clear about the unfairness of Nazanin’s situation. It is time for the Iranian government to protect its own citizens.”

Speaking before his visit to Iran, Burt said last week : “I will also use the opportunity of my visit to push for the resolution we all want to see in the cases of the British dual nationals detained in Iran.”

Burt is the first UK minister to visit the country since the US withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal in May, dismaying the UK and other European nations. He said it was “a crucial moment for Iran’s relationship with the UK, and the wider world”.