Iran’s Fars news agency said Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Ashouri were freed after Britain paid a historic debt of 400 million pounds (US$520 million) for their release. Writes Hossein Beizayi
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a project manager with the Thomson Reuters Foundation, was arrested at a Tehran airport in April 2016. Later, she was convicted by an Iranian court of plotting to overthrow the clerical establishment. Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who served most of her first sentence in Tehran’s Evin prison, was released in March 2020 during the Coronavirus pandemic and was kept under house arrest at her parents’ home in Tehran. In March 2021, she was released from house arrest but was summoned to court again on new charges. In April 2021, Zaghari-Ratcliffe was sentenced to a new term in jail on charges of propaganda against Iran’s ruling system, charges she denies.
Anousheh Ashouri, an Iranian-British businessman, released on Wednesday, was arrested in 1996 while traveling to Iran to visit his mother. Another detainee, Morad Tahbaz, has also been freed from prison but not yet cleared to leave Iran.
Iran does not recognize dual citizenship, so such individuals are denied consular services when detained.
“I am very pleased to confirm that the unfair detention of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anousheh Ashouri in Iran has ended today, and they will now return to the UK,” Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Twitter.
Richard Ratcliffe, Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s husband, family members, and supporters, had staged a tireless campaign for her release.
The ransom
Iran’s Fars news agency said Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Ashouri were freed after Britain paid a historic debt of 400 million pounds ($520 mln) for their release.
The foreign ministers of Iran and Britain confirmed that London’s debt to Tehran had been settled. British Foreign Secretary Liz Terrace said in a statement that the country’s debt to Iran had been repaid and that “these resources would be used exclusively to buy humanitarian items.” The Foreign Minister of the Islamic Republic, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, also announced that the British debt to Iran was received “a few days ago.” At the same time, he called the connection between the settlement of this debt and the liberation of Zaghari and Ashouri “incorrect.”
Iran’s “Hostage Diplomacy”
The regime’s Intelligence Ministry continues to target people on vaguely defined espionage charges, but the IRGC Intelligence Organization, led by Hossein Taeb, appears to have established itself as the leading security agency in repressing dissent and perceived threats to the autocratic control of the Islamic Republic’s unelected political bodies, extending its reach to foreign and dual nationals.
In the past 43 years, the Islamic Republic has taken hostage or detained many foreigners and dual nationals. Security agencies arrest occasional visitors or tourists on vague and trumped-up charges of espionage or anti-regime activities. Usually, the detained individuals are exchanged for money or the release of certain Iranians imprisoned in the West for illegal activities. Over the past few years, Iran has detained an increasing number of dual and foreign nationals on vague and unsubstantiated charges of espionage. This is part of an alarming trend in which these individuals are targeted and used as bargaining chips to further Iranian foreign policy interests. According to Human Rights Watch, Iranian authorities “have violated detainees’ due process rights and carried out a pattern of politically motivated arrests.” This use of “hostage diplomacy” has fast become a normalized tool of Iranian statecraft.
Arbitrary detention and due process violations
In 2018, Human Rights Watch reviewed the cases of 14 dual or foreign nationals arrested by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), compiling evidence from former detainees, lawyers, family members, and Iranian policy experts. They found a shocking lack of evidence for accusations of spying and espionage, with the majority charged with “cooperating with hostile states” based on misrepresented connections with various legitimate institutions.
The review found a systematic denial of legal counsel to detainees, particularly during the investigation phase, amounting to serious due process violations. As a result, coerced confessions are often used as evidence in revolutionary courts.
Bargaining chips for the Iranian regime
It is clear that Iran continues to use dual and foreign nationals as a tool of political bargaining. Despite the alarming lack of evidence, Iran often accuses people of espionage and points to national security concerns. Unfair trials, often conducted in a language that the defendants do not understand, the prevention of the presence of a lawyer of the victim’s choosing, disproportionate sentencing, long-term solitary confinement, and interrogations that lead to forced confessions that are sometimes televised, have been documented.
The detention of dual nationals and foreigners is seemingly purposeful and systematic and should be widely condemned. Iran cannot be allowed to use humans as pawns on its political chessboard.
Article 9 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights enshrines every individual’s right to be free from arbitrary arrest, detention, or exile, while Article 10 enshrines an individual’s right to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal when faced with criminal charges.
One cannot analyze the freeing of the British citizens from the clasp of the mullahs and its notorious Revolutionary Guards without looking at other parameters, including the on-off Vienna negotiations. Iran, desperate to reach any kind of agreement with the western powers to relieve itself from sanctions and its economic suffocation, even for a short period of time, is ready to offer different incentives and dance to different tunes.
Appeasing a terrorist, illogical, brutal, and deceptive regime, in any shape and form will only embolden the regime and make it more aggressive. The regime of the mullahs cannot be trusted under any circumstances; that is what history teaches us; it is up to us to listen and benefit from it or to ignore and pay a hefty price.
