Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe had no reason to suspect her visit to see her parents in Iran would end with her spending more than three years subjected to physical and psychological torture in a Tehran prison.

But had the British-Iranian charity worker known that just four months earlier, another young woman was secretly detained in the country on similarly spurious charges of spying for the UK Government, she may have thought twice about the trip with her husband and young daughter in spring 2016.

Ana-Diamond has never spoken about her detention in Iran. But she has decided to reveal her arrest and experience in one of the world's most feared prisons to shed light on the Islamic Republic’s ruthless diplomatic strategy of using dual nationals as pawns in its standoff with the West.

“There are a countless number of cases like Nazanin and (British Council worker) Aras Amiri’s,” says Ana, 24, who spoke to the Telegraph this week on condition that her surname not be published to protect family in Iran. “Many of us were threatened with longer sentences by the judiciary if we even thought of going public.”