UK says Iran’s treatment of Zaghari-Ratcliffe is ‘torture’

British-Iranian, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, was sentenced in late April to a year’s imprisonment and banned from leaving the country for a further 12 months. (File/AFP)
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Updated 02 May 2021
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UK says Iran’s treatment of Zaghari-Ratcliffe is ‘torture’

  • Iran's state TV said Zaghari-Ratcliffe will be released "after the payment of a military debt" owed by Britain to Tehran
  • British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab says she’s being held ‘unlawfully’

LONDON: Iran’s treatment of detained dual national Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe amounts to “torture” and she is being held hostage, Britain said on Sunday, after she was convicted anew and banned from leaving the Islamic republic.
The British-Iranian woman has been held in Iran since 2016. In late April, she was sentenced to a year’s imprisonment and banned from leaving the country for a further 12 months.
British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, who spoke to Zaghari-Ratcliffe on Wednesday, said she was being held “unlawfully” and “being treated in the most abusive” way.
“I think it amounts to torture the way she’s being treated, and there is a very clear, unequivocal obligation on the Iranians to release her,” he told BBC television on Sunday.
Her husband Richard Ratcliffe argues she is being held hostage as part of a diplomatic stratagem.
“I think it’s very difficult to argue against that characterization,” Raab said, going further than previous UK denunciations over the case.
“It is clear that she is subjected to a cat and mouse game that the Iranians, or certainly part of the Iranian system, engage with and they try and use her for leverage on the UK.”

Iran's state TV, citing an Iranian official, said Zaghari-Ratcliffe will be released "after the payment of a military debt" owed by Britain to Tehran.
“The release of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe in exchange for the UK's payment of its 400 million pound-debt to Iran has also been finalized,” he said. 

Meanwhile, a UK Foreign Office official has played down speculation on Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s release. 

"We continue to explore options to resolve this 40-year-old case and will not comment further as legal discussions are ongoing," a Foreign Office spokesperson said, in reference to the debt.
Richard Ratcliffe has linked his wife’s plight to a British debt dating back more than 40 years for army tanks paid for by the shah of Iran.
When the shah was ousted in the 1979 revolution, Britain refused to deliver the tanks to the new Islamic republic.
London admits it owes Iran several hundred million pounds over the contract involving a British intermediate company, International Military Services (IMS), but is reportedly constrained by international sanctions in its ability to repay.
“We recognize the IMS debt should be repaid and we’re looking at arrangements for securing that,” Raab told Times Radio.
But Raab said nuclear talks currently ongoing with Iran and its upcoming presidential elections formed a difficult backdrop in all negotiations.
Dual-national detainees including Zaghari-Ratcliffe “shouldn’t be held as leverage in any negotiations,” the minister stressed. “It’s just a basic moral decency.”
Zaghari-Ratcliffe, 42, appeared in court last month to face new charges of “propaganda against the system,” a week after she finished a five-year sentence for plotting to overthrow the regime, accusations she strenuously denies.
Richard Ratcliffe said the family hoped she could at least serve any new sentence under house arrest, with her parents in Tehran. But the situation was “bleak,” he told AFP last week.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe was initially detained while on holiday in Iran in 2016, when she was working as a project manager for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the news agency and data firm’s philanthropic wing.
She has been under house arrest in recent months and had her ankle tag removed, giving her more freedom of movement and allowing her to visit other relatives in Tehran.
In March, legal campaign group Redress handed a report to the UK government which it said “confirms the severity of the ill-treatment that Nazanin has suffered.”
The organization said it “considers that Iran’s treatment of Nazanin constitutes torture.”
Iranian authorities have denied that Zaghari-Ratcliffe has been mistreated.
Richard Ratcliffe said secretive court hearings in London over the tank debt had again been postponed last week, and noted the personal toll suffered by the family.
Ahead of Christmas, their young daughter Gabriella made an advent calendar to count down the expected end of her mother’s previous five-year sentence.
“We have not yet discussed with her what two more years without mummy means,” he said in an article published Saturday on the website Declassified UK.
“Though again she wants me to sleep in her room at night.”


Drone attack targets Tawke oilfield in Iraq’s Kurdistan

Updated 2 min 40 sec ago
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Drone attack targets Tawke oilfield in Iraq’s Kurdistan

BAGHDAD: A drone attack targeted Norwegian oil and gas firm DNO's oilfield in Tawke in the Zakho Administration area of northern Iraq on Thursday, according to the Kurdistan region's counter-terrorism service.
It is the second attack on the DNO-operated field amid a wave of drone attacks that began early this week.

PHOTO GALLERY: Massive demonstrations in Aleppo in rejection of foreign intervention in Syria’s internal affairs

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PHOTO GALLERY: Massive demonstrations in Aleppo in rejection of foreign intervention in Syria’s internal affairs

Israel’s airstrikes blew up part of Syria’s defense ministry and hit near the presidential palace as it vowed to destroy government forces attacking Druze in southern Syria and demanded they withdraw.

People took to the streets of Aleppo in rejection of foreign intervention in Syria’s internal affairs.


Two dead, several injured in raid on Catholic church in Gaza

Updated 26 min 55 sec ago
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Two dead, several injured in raid on Catholic church in Gaza

  • The strike damaged the Holy Family Church, the only Catholic Church inside the Palestinian enclave

GAZA CITY: Two women were killed and several people were injured following a strike which hit the Catholic parish in the Gaza Strip, doctors at the Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City said on Thursday.
The strike damaged the Holy Family Church, the only Catholic Church inside the Palestinian enclave.
The Vatican did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Israeli Defense Forces said it was looking into the matter.
Italy’s ANSA news agency said six people were seriously injured, while parish priest Father Gabriele Romanelli, who used to regularly update the late Pope Francis about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, suffered light leg injuries.
“Israeli raids on Gaza have also hit the Holy Family Church,” Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said in a statement.
“The attacks against the civilian population that Israel has been carrying out for months are unacceptable. No military action can justify such an attitude,” she added.


Yemen’s Houthis claim missile attack on Israel airport

Updated 47 min 32 sec ago
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Yemen’s Houthis claim missile attack on Israel airport

  • Israel has carried out several air strikes on Yemen, including on the port city of Hodeida earlier this month

Yemen’s Houthis claimed a missile launched at Israel’s main civilian airport, after the Israeli military said it intercepted a missile fired from the Arabian Peninsula country.
The Houthis targeted Ben Gurion International Airport near Tel Aviv with a “Zulfiqar ballistic missile” and drone, military spokesman Yehya Saree said late Wednesday.
In the video statement, he also announced drone attacks on military targets and the southern Israeli port of Eilat.
The Houthis have launched repeated missile and drone attacks against Israel since the Gaza war began in October 2023, sparked by Hamas’s attack on Israel, claiming solidarity with Palestinians.
In response, Israel has carried out several air strikes on Yemen, including on the port city of Hodeida earlier this month.
The Israeli military had said that “following the sirens that sounded a short while ago in several areas in Israel, one missile that was launched from Yemen was intercepted.”
Early on Wednesday, pro-government forces in Yemen said they seized “750 tons of weapons” en route from Iran to the Houthis.
US Central Command hailed the operation, calling it “the largest seizure of Iranian advanced conventional weapons in their history.”
Tarek Saleh, who heads the Yemeni National Resistance Forces, said in a post on X that the seizure included “naval and air missile systems, an air defense system, modern radars, drones, monitoring devices, anti-tank missiles, B-10 artillery, tracking lenses, sniper rifles, ammunition, and military equipment.”
Earlier this month, the Houthis resumed deadly attacks in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, targeting ships they accuse of having links to Israel, to force Israel to end the Gaza war.


Fire at mall in Iraq leaves at least 60 dead, officials say

Updated 17 July 2025
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Fire at mall in Iraq leaves at least 60 dead, officials say

  • “We have compiled a list of 59 victims whose identities have been confirmed, but one body was so badly burned that it has been extremely difficult to identify,” a city health official told Reuters

BAGHDAD: A massive fire in a hypermarket in Al-Kut city in eastern Iraq has left at least 60 people dead and 11 others missing, the city’s health authorities and two police sources told Reuters on Thursday.
Videos circulating on social media showed flames engulfing a five-story building in Al-Kut overnight as firefighters tried to contain the blaze.
Reuters could not independently verify the videos.
“We have compiled a list of 59 victims whose identities have been confirmed, but one body was so badly burned that it has been extremely difficult to identify,” a city health official told Reuters.
“We have more bodies that have not been recovered still under fire debris,” city official Ali Al-Mayahi told Reuters.
The cause of the fire was not immediately known, but the province’s governor said initial results from an investigation would be announced within 48 hours, the state news agency (INA)reported.
“We have filed lawsuits against the owner of the building and the mall,” INA quoted the governor as saying.