BICOM

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe started a three-day hunger strike yesterday in protest against the Iranian authorities refusal to provide her with proper medical treatment.

Ratcliffe was imprisoned in Tehran in 2016 after being convicted of espionage and sentenced to five years in prison. Her husband, Richard Ratcliffe, said prison officials have refused to let Nazanin see a doctor to examine lumps in her breast and other health issues. He added that his wife needs neurological care for neck pains and numbness in her arms and legs, as well as permission to see a psychiatrist.

Ratcliffe also revealed that Nazanin was pressured to spy on the UK for Iran at the same time as she was offered a short-term release. He said this offer, which she refused, “really pushed her over the edge”. “The only weapon we have is to tell Nazanin’s story,” he said, adding that he hoped the hunger strike would get the Iranians to take his wife “seriously”.

British Foreign Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, summoned the Iranian ambassador to the Foreign Office to demand that Zaghari-Ratcliffe be provided with proper medical care.

Hunt tweeted after the meeting: “Her ongoing detention is TOTALLY unacceptable and her treatment at the hands of Iranian authorities is a fundamental breach of human rights. This afternoon I will also meet Richard Ratcliffe. We all have Nazanin high in our thoughts as she starts her hunger strike today. It is a truly terrible indictment of Iran’s approach that she feels she needs to resort to such an ordeal. Iran must take action now #freeNazanin.”

Labour’s Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry said: “We repeat our calls on the Iranian authorities not just to end the inhumane treatment Nazanin has been suffering in prison, but to end her unjust detention altogether, and allow her to come home with her daughter to London without any further delay.”

Zaghari-Ratcliffe is being detained in Iran’s Evin prison and is joined on her hunger strike by prominent Iranian human rights activist Narges Mohammadi, who is serving a 16 year sentence after being found guilty of “establishing and running the illegal splinter group Legam,” a human rights movement that campaigns for the abolition of the death penalty.