A British citizen detained in Iran for nearly six years was at the airport and beginning her journey back to the U.K., her local lawmaker Tulip Siddiq said Wednesday.
“Nazanin is at the airport in Tehran and on her way home,” she wrote on Twitter, referring to aid worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, 43, whose husband and supporters have campaigned tirelessly for her release since April 2016.
Siddiq said that Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s family didn’t yet have confirmation that she was on a flight, but that this was the closest she has come to freedom after a lengthy ordeal that has strained relations between Iran and Britain.
The news may further raise hopes for the revival of the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers after months of talks in Vienna.
“We haven’t at any point had her at the airport with her British passport in her hand,” Siddiq told Sky News. She represents the London neighborhood where Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s family lives and has campaigned on her behalf for years.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s sister-in-law, Rebecca Ratcliffe, told the BBC that she was still under Iranian control in the airport.
“So she’s still not free,” Ratcliffe said. “But it definitely feels like she’s about to be.”
It had appeared on Tuesday that Zaghari-Ratcliffe‘s departure was imminent.
She was given back her passport and was at her family home in Tehran, Siddiq said in a tweet Tuesday. A British government negotiating delegation was in Iran, she added.
Talks had also been underway for the release of Anoosheh Ashoori, a retired engineer in his 60s who has been imprisoned since 2017, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the discussions between London and Tehran.
Siddiq did not say whether Ashoori had also been released.
Iran has been accused of detaining the British nationals to force the U.K. to settle a dispute dating to the 1970s. Iran says Britain owes it about $524 million because of a canceled order for British tanks. Britain has said it is willing to pay the debt.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Ashoori are dual U.K.-Iranian citizens who had been imprisoned on what the British government maintains were trumped-up charges while visiting family in Iran. Zaghari-Ratcliffe was sentenced to five years, accused of plotting to overthrow the Iranian government.
She was then sentenced to additional time last year on a charge of promoting “propaganda against the system” for having participated in a protest outside the Iranian Embassy in London in 2009.
Ashoori was sentenced to 10 years in prison, accused of spying for Israel, a charge his family called “bogus.”
Human rights groups say the British, U.S. and other Western nationals imprisoned in Iran are being held on baseless charges and that Tehran uses detained foreigners as bargaining chips and to extract ransom payments.
A representative for the Iranian mission to the United Nations said last year that the Iranian government “categorically rejects” allegations that the pair and others being detained by the government were “hostages.”
