Zaghari-Ratcliffe ‘could fly home on March 7’

LONDON: Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, one of the world’s most high-profile political prisoners, could be freed in seven weeks’ time when her Iran prison sentence ends, her family has said.

The 42-year-old mother’s five-year detention on charges that she denies ends officially on March 7.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian dual national, “has begun counting down the weeks” before she is able to fly home to her husband Richard Ratcliffe and their 6-year-old daughter Gabriella in London.

The charity worker was arrested in 2016 at Tehran airport as she boarded a flight home with her daughter following a regular visit to her parents in Iran. Gabriella had her British passport confiscated and was sent to live with her grandparents.

Ratcliffe wrote to the UK Foreign Office and the Iranian Embassy this weekend to learn of the arrangements for his wife’s release.

His questions included whether she will be flown on board a military plane or commercial flight, how an electronic ankle tag she wears will be removed, and how she can regain her confiscated British passport. “We don’t want to leave everything until the last minute,” he said.

Since being released from the notorious Evin prison last year as the coronavirus pandemic broke out in Iran, Zaghari-Ratcliffe has lived under house arrest at her parents’ home in Tehran.

The UK Foreign Office said: “We remain committed to securing the immediate and permanent release of all arbitrarily detained dual nationals in Iran. We are doing everything we can to enable Nazanin to return home.”

Zaghari-Ratcliffe has created a seven-week countdown calendar on the wall of her bedroom. On the last week of the calendar, she has written “freedom.”

UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said Britain is “pushing as hard as it can” to free her, and negotiations with Iran had “intensified” recently.

He added that the incoming Biden administration in the US offers “additional possibilities” for Zaghari-Ratcliffe to leave Iran.