UK urges Iranian deputy FM on jailed British nationals
The meeting between British officials and Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri Kani came nearly three weeks after Richard Ratcliffe launched a hunger strike to protest his wife's detention.
The British government says it urged Iran to release its detained citizens on Thursday, but the husband of British-Iranian charity worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe says his own meeting with the Foreign Office gave him “no hope.”
British officials on Thursday met in London with Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri Kani to discuss the landmark nuclear deal ahead of a seventh round of talks in Vienna that are scheduled for Nov. 29.
A spokesperson for the UK’s Foreign Office said in a statement following the meeting that Bagheri Kani “was also pressed on the need for Iran to urgently release all British nationals unfairly detained in Iran, including Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, Anoosheh Ashoori and Morad Tahbaz."
Zaghari-Ratcliffe was arrested at Tehran’s airport in April 2016 on her way home to the United Kingdom from a family vacation. After being held in solitary confinement for more than eight months, she was sentenced to five years in prison for allegedly plotting to topple the government following a trial rights groups say was a sham.
