Does anybody trust BORIS JOHNSON to secure the release of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe?
Boris Johnson meets his Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Javad Zarif [Image: Atta Kenare/AFP/Getty Images].
This Writer firmly believes that Mr Johnson will put his foot in his mouth again – as he and other members of the stupid Conservative government have done continually since Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s case was brought up before the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee last month.
Mr Johnson still refuses to apologise for the imbecilic blunder that made Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s position so much worse. We are told she was likely to be released before Christmas, until Mr Johnson said he believed she had been in Iran to train journalists – unintentionally corroborating the charges under which she was arrested in 2016. For a foreign secretary, that is an unforgivable error.
Worse still is the fact that other members of the stupid Conservative government have tried to justify Mr Johnson’s behaviour by pretending an ignorance of the situation themselves – notably Michael Gove, in an interview with Andrew Marr.
Mr Gove said he did not know what Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe had been doing in Iran, at a time when the UK government’s line is very firmly that she was on holiday.
Richard Ratcliffe, Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s husband, said in an interview published today (December 9) that he did not understand why Mr Gove did this but he did not believe the government had been honest.
“With this government I have expectations, and sometimes it feels like they’ve not been entirely honest with me. So that’s the bit that will provoke me.
“So for instance, Michael Gove saying, ‘I don’t know [why Nazanin was in Iran when she was arrested].” Mr Ratcliffe wrote to the Foreign Office, and Downing Street issued a clarification. “You’ve got some citizen reminding cabinet ministers of what their own policy is. Mental.”
Mental is the word – especially when describing Boris Johnson going on a mission to free Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe from a fate to which he consigned her with his own stupidity.
Boris Johnson has arrived in Tehran, where he is expected to lobby for the release of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the British-Iranian woman who has been imprisoned there for nearly two years.
The foreign secretary landed in the Iranian capital on Saturday morning, where he will meet his counterpart, Mohammad Javad Zarif, to discuss his “grave concerns” for Zaghari-Ratcliffe and other dual-nationals.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe has been told she will appear in court on Sunday facing new charges relating to espionage that could result in her five-year sentence being extended by as much as 10 years.
Johnson has denied these additional charges are due to his error in telling a foreign affairs select committee in November that she had been in Iran to train journalists.
Source: Boris Johnson arrives in Iran to discuss release of Zaghari-Ratcliffe | Politics | The Guardian
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NO> BUT I sincerely hope he does. It s not fair of her or her family. He should personally refund all her financial problems.
This ‘Right Honourable’ person should do the honourable thing and offer himself up for exchange!
They should swap Release Nazanin, Keep Boris, that would be good for relations and England
so where did he get his info on her so called covert agenda. Did he make it up in his head or was there some genuine intelligence of her from the Intelligence agencies from various sources. Why would she risk her child in such a reckless act and her own family remaining out there. One Johnson is enough to bear without his equally useless father now clamouring for publicity on our TVs. What will Boris trade off to clear his name?
If he does manage to secure her release, he will be hailed as a hero!
Wrongly.
Won’t have been him that did the hard work, surprised he was not cracking jokes!!!!
the trouble with Boris is that he is not known for his integrity unlike myself being retired from the bank of England. and although that wont count for much in the uk thankfully the rest of the world see us In a different light
the way I see this is very typical as I have family relatives who often go home across the middle east with no difficulty whatsoever subject as to why they are going home and for the reason stated on the visa application
this lady must have fallen foul in some small way when she was with her family on holiday and if not that was the case it was interpreted by someone else at what she was doing
we saw this type of misunderstanding a short while a go by a man from the uk who went to Dubai in the touching of another man in a club
these miner occurrences that do transpire from time to time are normally the result of poor communication on all sides
Johnson was wrong to make any comment in the first place as he had not spoken in person to Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe so therefore anything he would have said would be doubtful and would have been seen as such
Mr Gove was in the wrong to make any comment also as he had not even spoken to Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe so that just is hear say on his part
the procedure is very simple the Iranian embassy would have contact the Foreign & Commonwealth Office in London to say we have a lady that’s been arrested because of x and it is then down to the team that deals with Iran to make contact with Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe for her account of why she has been arrested
under normal circumstances her case would be reviewed and she would have been discharged if hers was just a minor incident in not keeping with her visa
none of us know on why she has been arrested and boris now needs to play a professional role and to fully understand on why
once he achieves this and apologises to the Iranian government she will then be released and not until
I don’t think Boris could get a lost dog released from Battersea, to be honest. I know our voting system is pretty hopeless but even so it amazes me that someone so utterly incompetent manages to get elected to Parliament over and over again.