Daughter of Morad Tahbaz Staged Sit-in Outside British Foreign Office Building in London

Roxsan Tahbaz, daughter of Morad Tahbaz, a tri-national environmental activist imprisoned in Iran, staged a sit-in on Wednesday, April 13 outside the British Foreign Office building in London to protest the continued imprisonment of her father.

Ms. Tahbaz conducted the sit-in with the accompaniment of Amnesty International, and told reporters that she and her family are protesting the British Foreign Office’s failure to pursue her father’s case.

According to Amnesty International’s report in Britain, Roxsan Tahbaz hopes that this action will ensure that Liz Truss, British Foreign Secretary, hears their message and requests.

She said: “All we are asking for is that she brings our father home.”

While expressing satisfaction with the return of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ansari to Britain and their reunion with their families, Ms. Tahbaz said: “But my father has been forgotten. This is not right, this is a betrayal and it must be corrected.”

She added: “Our parents must be brought home immediately and unconditionally. We must be reunited.”

During a prisoner exchange between the British government and the Islamic Republic involving dual-national prisoners in late February of last year, Morad Tahbaz, a British-American-Iranian citizen, was supposed to be released as well. However, British officials told the Tahbaz family that they have delegated the resolution of his case to the U.S. government.

Sasha Deshmukh, head of Amnesty International in Britain, told Voice of America that having other nationalities does not negate Britain’s responsibility in this matter, and ordinary citizens should not become victims of political disputes.

Accompanying Roxsan Tahbaz in front of the British Foreign Office building in support of the Tahbaz family, he said: “The government’s work remains unfinished, Nazanin and Anoosheh are home, but Morad and Mehran Raouf are not.”

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ansari, two dual-national prisoners (Iranian-British), after years of imprisonment in Iran’s Islamic Republic prisons, were released last month after London’s settlement of its outstanding debt to Tehran and returned to Britain.

Source: Voice of America