Nazanin is in despair about her trial, she told me we should divorce

Today, in a closed Iranian court, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe faces a fresh trial. Here, her husband Richard talks about their terror for the future and the heavy toll of their ordeal

AFP via Getty Images

Susannah Butter @susannahbutter

6 November 2020

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and her six-year-old daughter Gabriella were on a Skype call painting pictures of bats for Halloween last Tuesday when they were interrupted by a knock at the door. It was Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, summoning Nazanin, who has been under house arrest in Tehran since March, to court and telling her to pack a bag for prison. Guards picked her up this morning. Her Hampstead MP Tulip Siddiq later tweeted she had been taken to court but the trial was adjourned before she could put forward a defence and she is back home with her parents, waiting to see if she will be given a date for the next hearing. It is a huge setback for Nazanin and her family, who were tentatively beginning to hope she might be home for Christmas in West Hampstead.

Her husband Richard Ratcliffe, a softly spoken accountant in a rumpled checked shirt, remains remarkably composed, if weary, as he recounts the horrific, Kafkaesque ordeal that his family has been through since he last saw his wife in person on March 17, 2016 when he waved her off on holiday to see her parents in Tehran. We are speaking before the verdict and he has spent the past week “jittery”, unable to think of anything else.

Four years ago, Nazanin, who has British and Iranian citizenship, was stopped by the Revolutionary Guard at the airport on her way back to the UK and sentenced to five years in prison for espionage — a charge she strongly denies. Her experience in the hardline Evin prison has been brutal, with long periods in solitary confinement, anxiety attacks and breast cancer scares.

But in March, when Covid broke out in the prison, Nazanin was temporarily released and sent to her parents’ house. She was able to see her husband for the first time in two years, on Skype, “and speak properly, notice the little things you can’t pick up on in an eight-minute call from prison,” says Ratcliffe, 45. “I was relieved that she looked better than I feared. She was euphoric. It was the opposite of where we are now.

“We had thought that her release from prison was the start of the process of getting her home. The legal argument was made to let her go, but the political will was not there. Now we would be deluded to think that it was almost over because it is going the other way. It would be devastating if she went back into solitary confinement.” The summons came after a UK court hearing on a debt owed to Iran was postponed. Both countries formally deny there is any connection between the debt and detention of British-Iranian dual nationals in Tehran jails.

“Nazanin is quite up and down. Every night she struggles to sleep, having nightmares about being back in prison, then in the morning we have a chat to calm her down.” She needs to see a gynaecologist, but the Revolutionary Guard have said they have to accompany her to her appointment and watch. “We are never sure if it is about control or humiliation, sometimes it’s both.”

Ratcliffe runs his hands through his light brown hair as he talks about how this has affected his family. “On Tuesday Nazanin told me, ‘Two years ago I said you should just get divorced and find someone else and I am telling you again you should do it now.’” He continues: “Her despair tells her she will never get out and she is making her husband suffer — he needs to go off and find a new life. She needs to know it is not all lost. It is not a big romantic thing; it is just that I am still here for her and we will get her home. In solitary you are told you have lost everything so the thing she needs to feel and hear from me specifically is that she has not, we are still here waiting for her.”

Nazanin, Richard and Gabriella, in 2016

The Foreign Secretary, Dominic Raab, has condemned Iran’s treatment of Nazanin as “unacceptable”, adding that the country “must end her arbitrary detention and that of all dual nationals”. But there is precedent for the judge deciding to send Nazanin back to prison, as the Revolutionary Guard flex their muscles ahead of presidential elections next year and the US election. Detained British-Australian Kylie Moore-Gilbert has reportedly been moved back into solitary, as has a German-Iranian woman. “They are making fairly draconian moves, there are a couple of cases which aren’t public,” Ratcliffe says. “The Revolutionary Guard are showing their claws, being aggressive, showing they have the ability to get what they want.” Nazanin’s lawyer is “firmly of the view that no self-respecting judge would convict her, which I’m not sure matters”.

Ratcliffe is pushing for a member of the UK Government to attend the trial, which has never happened with any of Nazanin’s previous trials. “A key thing is the way the Iranian system secludes people. Just asserting someone from the British government needs to be there makes a difference to that.” Raab’s statement reassured Ratcliffe. “All along, we wanted the Government to say it was unacceptable. On Tuesday when I spoke to Raab he was clearly getting his bearings, but he has got stronger with the messaging we hoped for — if she goes back to prison that is a red line crossed.

“They need to show that if she goes back to prison there will be a cost. Talk is cheap. It is like telling Gabriella to go to bed — until you actually impose bedtime it is pushing boundaries of conversation. The Revolutionary Guard are trolling the British Government and need to be reminded that this is no way to behave.” Raab is the fourth foreign secretary since Nazanin was detained, testing Ratcliffe’s considerable patience. “Each one wants to try the hand of friendship before they do the tough stuff, so we have had a bit of a reset a few times,” he says. Brexit has compounded the complexities. “Nazanin’s case has been in the shadow of Brexit. She was detained just before the referendum and I remember thinking we will get some attention once that’s out of the way.

“If I am being candid I think there has been a reluctance in diplomatic terms about what the Government wants to do when they have a big enough challenge with Brexit and are reluctant to open more battles. We have to prepare for the fact that bad news could come. Covid has been a leveller in some ways, but it is still important for the Revolutionary Guard to look like they are in control.” Ratcliffe speaks in a matter of fact way, never raising his voice and only swearing once, saying “the Revolutionary Guard don’t mind looking like bastards”. “The [Iranian prison] system is designed not to leave visible scars; it is the invisible ones. There will be a lot more catching up and realising how we have changed when she is finally home and the different ways we have got through this, we will re-harmonise. Nazanin likes to be organised, unlike me, so is packing a bag for prison, but at the same time she doesn’t want to believe she is going to have to go.” They made the decision to speak up about the case early on, because previous people who had been quiet were detained for a long time but now Ratcliffe thinks people look at them “and decide to be quiet”.

Gabriella was with her mother when she was detained and lived with her grandparents in Tehran until October last year while her father was in London. Now she is “busy settling into the UK”, Ratcliffe says, with a loving smile. “She corrects Nazanin’s English, she is a good nationalist. “You never know what she understands. She has asked female relatives if they can pick her up from school because her mummy can’t. She was on Panorama and was pleased that she had been on TV and a few mums at school had seen it, but generally she doesn’t like to be reminded she is in an unusual situation. She wants to fit in and is indignant when people know her mummy is in prison.” If they are watching a film about a mother and a daughter ,“she will go quiet”.

In Iran Nazanin’s parents were afraid to leave the house for the first few months after she came back. Nazanin and her parents have “been exposed to each others’s quirks and coping strategies”. “There was always a dynamic of the teenage daughter at home having to adjust to her dad’s rules,” Ratcliffe says. “But prison changes you and the conversations you are worried about having change. Her parents say, ‘You can’t talk about that sort of thing,’ but for her it’s a case of what’s the worst that can happen?” Nazanin tried to keep some sense of normality by cooking for her parents. She learnt how to make Iranian food on the women’s ward in prison - “they were fairly robust in their criticism of each other”, Ratcliffe says - and has attempted sushi, which her parents were unconvinced by.

They can’t talk about the future: “freedom needs to feel closer”. “There isn’t a sense of calming ourselves before the storm, there is too much wind and rainout there,” says Ratcliffe. “For Gabriella we will try to do a movie night to relax, with some popcorn so it feels fun and special. That is fine until it gets disrupted by phone calls. In some ways it is best not to plan too much. Even when she comes back, that is when the post-traumatic stuff will come out. It is a journey home, not an arrival.”