British-Iranian aid worker released from house arrest in Iran, faces new trial

Mar 8, 2021

British-Iraninan charity worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is free from house arrest in Iran but must return to court to face a new charge, her lawyer said on Sunday.

“She was pardoned by Iran’s supreme leader last year, but spent the last year of her term under house arrest with electronic shackles on her feet. Now they’re cast off,” her lawyer Hojjat Kermani told Iranian website Emtedad News, according to Reuters. “She has been freed.”

Kermani said Iran has now charged Zaghari-Ratcliffe with “spreading propaganda,” an accusation linked to her participation in a 2009 demonstration outside Iran’s embassy in London, as well as an interview she gave to BBC Persian. She is scheduled to appear in court on March 14. 

Zaghari-Ratcliffe, 42, was arrested at Tehran’s airport in April 2016 and sentenced to five years in prison for allegedly plotting to topple the government. Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who worked as a project manager with the Thomson Reuters Foundation, denies the charges and says she traveled to Iran with her 22-month-old daughter to visit her family. 

She and tens of thousands of other detainees were released temporarily in March 2020 over concerns the coronavirus could spread through Iran’s crowded prisons. For the past year, Zaghari-Ratcliffe was confined to her parents’ home in Tehran with an ankle bracelet limiting her movement.