Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe: this wrongly-jailed woman has become a pawn in an international power struggle.

This is what happens when you appeal to Boris Johnson for help.

Johnson was asked to help arrange the release of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe when he was Foreign Secretary, way back in 2017 after she was first imprisoned in Iran on a false charge of sedition.

Idiot that he is, our current prime minister botched it to such an extent that she was told she may face new charges.

It seems his untrue statement that she had been training journalists is not the reason she has been brought back to court. This Writer wonders whether it induced the Iranians to search for other reasons to imprison her, though.

She appeared in court on March 14 on a new charge of propaganda against the regime – apparently based on allegations that she took part in a demonstration outside the Iranian embassy in London 12 years ago and gave an interview to the BBC Persian service.

Nazanin’s husband Richard now believes that she is a pawn in negotiations over £400 million owed by the UK to Iran after a former ruler of that country, the Shah, paid for tanks that were never delivered because of the 1979 revolution in that country.

The current issue seems to be about interest payable on the debt. Johnson doesn’t want to pay the figure demanded by Iran, one expects.

So Nazanin stays in Iran – if not in prison (because of Covid-19) then under arrest.

Johnson doesn’t care. He’d rather have the cash.

Meanwhile his propaganda machine is trying to pretend that his government is still doing everything it can – and failing:

How sad that this Tory government’s failure to protect a woman should happen alongside the backlash over police oppression of women at the Sarah Everard vigil – on an annual day set aside to celebrate women.

Nitpickers can grip that it was Mother’s Day and not all women are mothers. Nazanin is, though – and she is separated from her child because of the wrong decisions of the UK’s prime minister.

Many of the people at Clapham Common were mothers – some were there with their daughters. No doubt all were there because they want their children to live in safer communities than we have now, due to Tory misrule.

So a day of celebration has turned – for many – into a day of anger and bitterness.

Source: Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe in Tehran court on new charge – BBC News

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