Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the British woman imprisoned in Tehran on espionage charges, is to go on hunger strike in protest against being denied access to medical care.

The British-Iranian dual national is asking for access to a doctor. She announced the hunger strike from Tehran’s Evin prison in a joint letter with a fellow prisoner, the human rights activist Narges Mohammadi.

The women said they have planned an initial three-day hunger strike, which will be extended until their demands are met.

Iran jailed Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe for diplomatic leverage, says Hunt Read more

In a letter published by the Tehran-based charity Defenders of Human Rights Centre, Zaghari-Ratcliffe said she and Mohammadi were banned from accessing medical care.

“In protest to this illegal, inhuman and unlawful behaviour, and to express our concerns for our health and survival at this denial of specialist treatment, despite taking daily medicines, we will go on hunger strike from 14.01.2019 to 16.01.2019,” the letter said. “We announce that in the event of the authority’s failure to address these concerns and them further endangering our health, we will take further action.”

Profile Who is Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe? Show Hide 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

Her husband, Richard Ratcliffe, told the Guardian that medical treatment was being blocked for his wife for lumps in her breasts, for neurological care over her neck pains and numbness in her arms and legs. She had also been banned from seeing an outside psychiatrist, despite all her treatment being approved by a prison doctor, he said.

“I think she just feels enough is enough,” he said. “She has announced she is going on hunger strike for three days and maybe more. She certainly feels she has got no choice. She thinks enough is enough.”

He said his wife’s mood had been “very bleak”. He said: “Certainly when she got the lumps in her breast she was very worried, and very low.”

He had managed to calm her down previously, he said, but the fact she had spent her 40th birthday in prison on Boxing Day had affected her. “I think it was passing that milestone and feeling she’s never going to get out, and that she is going to be denied having another baby.”

Of her planned hunger strike, he said: “For me, we’ve feared this day would come. It hasn’t quite come, and I hope it doesn’t come.”

He said he hoped the Iranian authorities would change their minds over her medical treatment. He said: “We can only hope that they will relent.”

He was seeking meetings with both the Iranian ambassador to London and the British ambassador to Tehran, he said, and was also hoping for a meeting with the foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt.

Play Video 0:39 Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe: husband hopeful of full release – video

Saturday marked 1,000 days since Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who works for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, was arrested at Tehran’s Imam Khomeini airport on 3 April 2016. She spent her 40th birthday, on Boxing Day, in prison despite renewed calls for her release. Her four-year-old daughter, Gabriella, has been staying with family in Iran.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe, from Hampstead, north London, was sentenced to five years in jail after being accused of spying, a charge she vehemently denies.

Mohammadi, 46, is serving a 16-year sentence after being found guilty of “establishing and running the illegal splinter group Legam”, a human rights movement that campaigns for the abolition of the death penalty.

Ellie Kennedy, an individuals at risk campaigner at Amnesty International UK, said: “It should obviously never have come to this. The Iranian authorities are entirely responsible for pushing these two unfairly-detained people to take such desperate measures.

“It’s shocking and unforgivable that the Iranian authorities can callously force prisoners of conscience into starving themselves in protest at their plight, and they should immediately provide full medical care to Nazanin and Narges.”

She said the UK government should strongly insist on immediate medical care for both women.





