Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe leaving Iran after lengthy prison term | News

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Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori are heading to the UK, according to their lawyer and a British MP.

Two detained British-Iranians, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori, are leaving Iran, according to their lawyer Hojjat Kermani and a British MP.

British lawmaker Tulip Siddiq said on Wednesday that Zaghari-Ratcliffe was “at the airport in Tehran and on her way home”. Earlier Kermani said Ashoori was on his way to the airport along with Zaghari-Ratcliffe.

The development came after Tehran and London pressed on with talks about a longstanding 400-million-pound ($520m) debt.

Siddiq said on Tuesday that aid worker Zaghari-Ratcliffe had had her British passport returned.

Nazanin is at the airport in Tehran and on her way home.

I came into politics to make a difference, and right now I’m feeling like I have.

More details to follow. #FreeNazanin

— Tulip Siddiq (@TulipSiddiq) March 16, 2022

Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a project manager with the Thomson Reuters Foundation was arrested at a Tehran airport in April 2016 and later convicted by an Iranian court of plotting to overthrow the clerical establishment.

Her family and the foundation, a charity that operates independently of Thomson Reuters and its news subsidiary Reuters, deny the charge.

Ashoori was sentenced to 10 years in jail in 2019 for spying for Israel’s Mossad and two years for “acquiring illegitimate wealth”, according to Iran’s judiciary.