Nazanin Zaghari: Combing my daughter's hair is a dream I've been waiting for for three years
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe's open letter "To all mothers in Iran": "During these three years, combing my daughter's hair has been a dream for me that I continue to wait for"
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, an Iranian-British citizen residing in Evin Prison, has written an open letter to “all mothers in Iran” on the occasion of the start of the school year. In the letter, she describes the hardships of being separated from her daughter Gabriella Giso Ratcliffe, and announced that Giso will be sent to England for the start of the school year:
"In the near future, those who have kept me away from my child will sit and watch as my daughter returns to England to attend school with her father after more than three and a half years; a journey that will be filled with anxiety and trepidation for both of us."
Nazanin Zaghari traveled to Iran with her family in Nowruz 2016, but on April 5, while trying to return to the UK with her 22-month-old daughter, she was arrested by Revolutionary Guard officers at Imam Khomeini Airport and then transferred to an undisclosed location in Kerman. A few months later, Ms. Zaghari was transferred to the Revolutionary Guards’ Ward 22-A in Evin Prison and in early January 2016 to the women’s ward of the prison. On September 6 of that year, she was sentenced to five years in prison by the Revolutionary Court, and this sentence was upheld by the Court of Appeal. The Supreme Court also rejected her appeal.
"Today I sit in this cell as the mother of a five-year-old girl, a girl taken from me by my own country at the age of 22 months," she wrote. "Those first, increasingly painful years of separation from my child, when she was just beginning to speak, were filled with indescribable bitterness. You have to be a mother and have experienced separation from your child to understand the depth of this feeling."
According to this letter, Ms. Zaghari's visits with her daughter are limited to weekly meetings in the prison's visiting hall:
“Every Sunday morning, my heart beats faster than ever when I see my daughter Gabriela Giso so excited in the visiting hall of Evin Prison. When the door to the visiting hall opens and prisoners are allowed in, my little girl runs to me first, calls my name, and rushes into my arms. These short minutes may be the shortest hugs, but they are undoubtedly the most beautiful and energizing hugs in the world. These hugs are my whole world. But then the anxieties begin. Sunday quickly slips away from me and disappears into the fog of the cell.”
In this letter, she addresses Iranian mothers and describes the pain of being away from her child as follows:
"Maybe combing your daughter's hair is a normal part of your daily routine. For me, for these three and a half years, it was a dream that I still look forward to... Maybe the thought of not being able to hold your baby in your arms is unimaginable. It's an image that even after all these years, I try to escape. That's the deepest torture."
Ms. Zaghari-Ratcliffe, an employee of the Thomas Reuters Foundation, was hospitalized in July this year due to the deterioration of her mental and physical condition resulting from her prison experience. She has been eligible for release since the fall of 2017, under Article 58 of Iran’s Islamic Penal Code, but remains in Evin Prison. According to this article, after serving one-third of her sentence, the court can issue an order for conditional release.
In this letter, he also mentions this issue and expresses his dissatisfaction with the country's court process: "The officials of my country accuse me of innocence, convict me of a crime I did not commit, and take revenge, and have no mercy... Instead of protecting my rights and those of my child, my country is auctioning off my freedom in exchange for negotiations, and only I, my child, and my wife are paying the price."
In July 2018, a judge told Ms. Zaghari-Ratcliffe that she was being held by the Iranian government as a bargaining chip to convince the British government to pay its historical debts to Iran. She added in protest against this policy:
"My child and I are still the playthings of politicians who, inside and outside the borders of my homeland, have used us as tools to achieve their political goals and policies, and have done everything in their power to achieve their goals and exploit an innocent mother who thinks of nothing but her child. Their last shot is to auction off a mother who cannot bear to be away from her child any longer."
He concluded by referring to Gabriela Giso's trip to England and the end of limited weekly meetings with her, writing:
