Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe spends 1,000th day detained in Iran

Amnesty International has urged the Government to keep pressing for the release of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe from jail in Iran, describing her 1,000th day in detention as “another extremely depressing milestone”.

The British-Iranian mother spent her 40th birthday on Boxing Day in prison, and Saturday marks 1,000 days since she was first arrested at Tehran’s Imam Khomeini airport on April 3 2016.

Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a charity worker of Hampstead in north London, was sentenced to five years in jail after being accused of spying, a charge she strongly denies.

Kate Allen, Amnesty International UK’s director, said: “Today is another extremely depressing milestone for Nazanin and her family.

“We had of course hoped that Nazanin would have been free long ago, but we can assure her and her family that we won’t stop campaigning until that happens.

“Nazanin is a prisoner of conscience who should never have been jailed in the first place.

“The UK Government should continue to press for Nazanin’s release using every channel of communication available to it. Our supporters will do likewise.”

Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said this week that he hoped her latest birthday would be the last she has to spend in custody.

The charity worker’s four-year-old daughter Gabriella has been staying with family in Iran since Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who works for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, was detained.

Her husband Richard Ratcliffe has mounted a high-profile campaign for his wife’s release, branding her detention a “travesty of justice”.

Mr Hunt pressed his Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Zarif, about the case in September when they met in New York on the fringes of a United Nations General Assembly.

The month before, she had been granted a three-day release but her request for an extension was denied and she was forced to say goodbye to Gabriella again and return to jail.