Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe, 37, a project manager for the Thomson Reuters Foundation who came to the United Kingdom in 2007, was detained in Iran’s main airport as she tried to check in on April 3 to fly home to England with the couple’s daughter.
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Nazanin is with the Thomson Reuters Foundation, a charity organization operating independently from Reuters News, as a project coordinator.
The couple’s two-year-old British citizen daughter Gabriella, who is staying with Nazanin’s grandparents while her mother is in prison, has had no face-to-face contact with either of her parents for more than a month, and has had her British passport confiscated, Ratcliffe said. The child, Gabriella, is being cared for by her grandmother in the country. “She has been over to visit her family regularly since making Britain her home”, he said.
Mr Ratcliffe – who has branded the detention “outrageous and arbitrary” – has no idea where they are now.
She has not been allowed to make a call out of the country to speak with her husband or access to a lawyer. Nazanin has informed her family that she has been required to sign a confession under duress, its content unknown.
Mr Ratcliffe, 41, an accountant from West Hampstead, London, has been able to speak with his daughter via Skype but said she is “struggling”. I was in Iran a year ago and we had a wedding there as well. “This is her fourth trip and she really wanted the baby to see Iran”.
And according to a Facebook page set up to promote the campaign for her release; her mother, father and 22-month-old daughter Gabriella, will be allowed to visit her on Wednesday.
Mr Ratcliffe is petitioning the Government to help free his wife.
An online petition posted on Change.org callls on the British pirme minister, David Cameron, to intervene and use his position to press Iran for Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s release.
Amanda Rose, a close friend of Nazanin, said on the phone from Toronto, Canada: “I woke up yesterday morning and just thought it had to be a mistake”.
“I’ve heard people speculate that the arrest may have something to do with her charity work”, he said.
“It is just so cruel for her to be kept away from her baby, from her daughter”.
Barbara Ratcliffe, Mr Ratcliffe’s mother, said the whole family is “frantically anxious about Nazanin’s safety”.
“She is also so proud of where she came from and she wanted to go back to Iran to teach her daughter [about that side of her culture]”.
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Yesterday an FCO spokeswoman told MailOnline: ‘We have been providing support to Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s family we were first informed of her arrest, and will continue to do so’.
