Zaghari-Freedom Campaign: Boycott 10 of those responsible for her hostage-taking
The Campaign to Free Nazanin Zaghari wants to ask the UK Foreign Office to sanction 10 Iranian officials over what it calls her “hostage-taking.” Zaghari, a British-Iranian citizen, has been imprisoned in Iran for nearly 2,000 days.
The Guardian newspaper quoted the Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe Campaign as saying that this week marks the 2,000th day of Zaghari’s detention. To mark the occasion, the campaign plans to call on the British Foreign Office this week to immediately sanction 10 Iranians who have been “directly involved in state hostage-taking in Iran” since 1979.
According to the Guardian, the Campaign to Free Ms. Zaghari has prepared a case for these 10 Iranians, and the case is set to be submitted to Liz Truss, the new British Foreign Secretary.
This is the first time the campaign has called for sanctions against Iranians who are alleged to have engaged in “hostage-taking.” The campaign wants these sanctions to be implemented through asset freezes and travel bans.
Saeed Khatibzadeh, spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, announced on Sunday, September 19, that Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian will meet with Liz Terrace at the United Nations headquarters during his visit to New York.
This will be the first bilateral meeting between Iran and Britain at the level of foreign ministers since 2018.
Nazanin Zaghari, an employee of the Thomson Reuters Foundation, has been in prison since April 2016. After her five-year sentence ended and she was released from prison, another case has been filed against her, in which the British-Iranian citizen has been sentenced to one year in prison and a one-year ban on leaving Iran. Her 2,000th day of detention will be on Thursday, September 23.
The Zaghari Freedom Campaign said it will produce two more lists of Iranian officials in the coming months, based on interviews with 25 families whose members were detained and then held hostage.
Richard Ratcliffe, Zaghari's husband, has called on the British Foreign Secretary to "be proactive, act courageously and defend the rights of British citizens" in negotiations with his Iranian counterpart, otherwise Iran will "take more hostages."
Liz Truss is the fifth British Foreign Secretary to have been handed the Zaghari-Ratcliffe case.
The Guardian report does not mention the names of the 10 Iranians the campaign is calling for sanctions against, but the Zaghari Freedom Campaign says these individuals participated and played a role in various stages of her "arrest, interrogation, trial, abuse in prison, and torture."
The Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting had previously announced that Zaghari would be released in exchange for the payment of Britain's £400 million debt to Iran.
This is the amount paid to Britain in the last years of the reign of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi for the purchase of Chieftain tanks, but with the outbreak of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, these tanks were not delivered to Iran.
Richard Ratcliffe, Nazanin Zaghari's husband, has said that the Islamic Republic is using his wife as a hostage to receive this money.
Source: DW
