"Sending money in suitcases to Tehran has made the Islamic Republic a bad habit"

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi spoke with Radio Farda about the confirmation of the prison sentence of Iranian-British citizen Nazanin Zaghari.

Shirin Ebadi : I am very sorry that the Court of Appeal made the same mistake as the Court of First Instance. Unfortunately, there are several branches in the Revolutionary Court that we used to mockingly call the branch of confirmation of opinion. That is, there are courts that are completely obedient to the Ministry of Intelligence in appeals and confirm the original verdict issued based on the request of the Ministry of Intelligence. These are not actually courts of appeal, they are courts of confirmation of opinion.

Ms. Ebadi, Iranian media is saying that Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has been accused of soft subversion by the arresting agency. However, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe's husband, Richard Ratcliffe, said on Monday that his wife has not yet been informed of what the charges are. How do you interpret the failure to declare a crime despite being convicted?

This is another example of how our courts are influenced by security agents. It is another sign of the lack of independence of Iran's courts, and Ms. Zaghari's arrest is essentially a form of hostage-taking to demand from the British government property that the Iranian government considers itself entitled to.

Mr. Obama's treatment of the Iranian government, sending money in a suitcase to release four Iranian-American hostages who were in prison, including a Washington Post reporter, has embittered the Islamic Republic and put people with dual citizenship at risk, so that Iran can achieve its own irrational demands through their arrest.

Ms. Ebadi, the Center for Human Rights Defenders, an organization that you manage and chair, announced twenty days ago that Iranian judicial officials did not allow Nazanin Zaghari to make phone calls to her relatives even during Nowruz, despite the fact that this woman has a two-year-old daughter.

In fact, the pressure on Nazanin is to force the British government to pay the ransom demanded by the Iranian government as soon as possible, and according to the information we have, she has not even been able to call her family in Tehran and ask about her child for twenty days. They are canceling the weekly phone call, which is only for three minutes, on all sorts of excuses. They are also giving her very few opportunities to meet behind glass. It is not that she has not had the opportunity to meet to this day, but they are giving her this opportunity very rarely, and they are trying to prevent these meetings and phone calls from happening under any pretext so that Nazanin is put under more pressure.

Ms. Ebadi, as the news suggests, the British ambassador to Iran has also not been able to meet with Ms. Zaghari-Ratcliffe.

Since Ms. Zaghari has British citizenship, she should be able to meet with the British ambassador and use the legal services that the embassy provides her. But she has been denied this right from day one. The reason is actually because of the increased pressure on this woman. She has been held hostage.

But the apparent reason that the Iranian government is announcing is that we do not accept his second citizenship and that he came to Iran with an Iranian passport and therefore, in our opinion, he is Iranian and the British ambassador has no right to visit him in prison. But at the same time, I would like to add that under equal conditions, that is, Iranian citizens who have the citizenship of another country and went to prison there, such as those in prison in Malaysia, such as those in prison in Armenia or Georgia, the Iranian ambassador goes and meets with them and provides them with judicial services.

For example, a woman in India who was accused of unintentionally killing a child, Mr. Zarif and the Iranian ambassador went and spoke and secured the release of this woman. But they do not allow Iranian citizens who are citizens of other countries and are in prison in Iran to enjoy the same rights. And this is nothing but the lack of independence of the Iranian courts.

Source: Radio Farda