Nazanin Zaghari and Anousheh Ashouri on their way home; their plane has left Oman for the UK
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anousheh Ashouri, dual Iranian-British prisoners, are on their way back home to the UK after years of imprisonment.
British MP Tulip Siddique tweeted that the plane carrying Nazanin Zaghari-led Iranian journalist has flown to Britain and will land in the UK in the next few hours.
Earlier, British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said they would return to the UK today. Ms. Truss also said that Morad Tahbaz had been released from prison on bail.
Tulip Seddiq had previously expressed her satisfaction with Ms. Zaghari's release by reposting a photo of her on a plane leaving Iran.
The lawyer for Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anousheh Ashouri announced hours before the two were transferred to the airport in Tehran to leave the country.
The release of the two dual-national prisoners came after a British delegation traveled to Tehran for negotiations on Tuesday, March 14.
On Tuesday, Hojjat Kermani, the lawyer for Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a dual national imprisoned in Iran, told Reuters that "we hope to hear good news soon."
Nazanin Zaghari is a 43-year-old British-Iranian citizen who was arrested while leaving Iran in 2016 and later sentenced to five years in prison on security charges. Ms. Zaghari was temporarily released from prison in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, but a year later the court sentenced her to another sentence.
Anousheh Ashouri, a 68-year-old British-Iranian citizen, was arrested in August 2017 during a family trip to Iran and imprisoned on charges related to national security after a trial that Amnesty International called "unfair."
Morad Tahbaz is one of the prisoners with multiple citizenships. He is a citizen of Iran, Britain, and the United States, and is one of seven environmental activists who were arrested and transferred to Evin Prison in February 2017. Morad Tahbaz was introduced as a member of the Yew Conservation Project during the presidency of Masoumeh Ebtekar of the Environment Organization.
Other dual nationals or foreign citizens imprisoned in Iran include Siamak and Bagher Namazi, Emad Sharghi (Iranian-American citizens), Mehrdad Raouf, Ahmadreza Jalali (Iranian-Swedish researcher), Masoud Mosaheb and Kamran Ghaderi (Iranian-Austrian citizens), Fariba Adelkhah (Iranian-French citizen) and Nahid Taghavi (German citizen of Iranian descent), as well as French tourist Benjamin Brier.
Source: Voice of America
