Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe: UK to pay Tehran £400m to free British-Iranian national, state TV reports
by tts-admin | May 3, 2021 |
Sky News – May 2, 2021
Richard and Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliff. Click to enlarge
The UK will pay £400m to Tehran to free Iranian-British woman Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, according to reports on Iranian state TV.
Quoting an anonymous official, a state broadcaster said deals had been reached with both Britain and the US in order to release prisoners with Western links held in Iran.
It was said the UK had agreed to pay the £400m debt over the non-delivery of tanks dating back to the 1970s.
The US was said to have agreed a prisoner swap in exchange for the release of $7bn (£5bn) of frozen Iranian funds, but Washington did also not immediately acknowledge any deal.
“The release of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe in exchange for the UK’s payment of its £400m debt to Iran has also been finalised,” the official said.
It comes just days after Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe was sentenced to another year in prison on charges of “propaganda activities against the regime” in Iran.
She was also banned from leaving the country for one year for participating in a protest in front of the Iranian Embassy in London in 2009.
That came after she completed a five-year sentence in the Islamic Republic after being convicted of plotting the overthrow of Iran’s government, a charge that she, her supporters and rights groups deny.
While employed at the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of the news agency, she was taken into custody at Tehran airport in April 2016 as she was returning home to Britain after visiting family.
Richard Ratcliffe told the PA news agency he and his family “have heard nothing” about a deal to secure his wife’s release.
A Foreign Office spokesman said: “We continue to explore options to resolve this 40-year-old case and will not comment further as legal discussions are ongoing.”
Meanwhile, US State Department spokesman Ned Price said: “Reports that a prisoner swap deal has been reached are not true.
“As we have said, we always raise the cases of Americans detained or missing in Iran. We will not stop until we are able to reunite them with their families.”
Sky’s diplomatic editor Dominic Waghorn said: “The impression I get from the foreign office is that this is not true.
“Regrettably there is no confirmation from the Americans or the British.”
Earlier, foreign secretary Dominic Raab said the debt “is not actually the thing that is holding us up at the moment”.
The dispute dates back to the 1970s when the then-shah of Iran paid the UK £400m for 1,500 Chieftain tanks.
Britain refused to deliver the tanks to the new Islamic Republic when the shah was toppled in 1979, but kept the cash despite British courts accepting it should be repaid.
Source
I don’t know if this woman was spying against Iran though it is possible, but what I do know is the rank hypocrisy of the UK and US talking about Iran’s human rights record when the US has that hell-hole Guantanamo Bay, and the UK has continued the detention of Julian Assange even though he was found Not Guilty of the phony charges laid against him. And that’s because the US insists upon it.
We became the enemy our politicians were forever warning about. Our media became the propaganda organs of the state, we have political dissidents who flee to Russia or face detention without trial, and we rebuilt the Iron Curtain this time facing East. As a kid I always saw America as the danger. On the news I didn’t listen to the lies so they went over my head, but I watched American soldiers shooting up Vietnam and USAAF planes carpet-bombing the jungles. America was always the Cold War threat.
Heard that it was her connection to BBC Media Action that got her into trouble. This arm of the Beeb goes into states where regime change or destabilization is sought, and then trains that countries journos on how to follow the western narrative. Nice guys huh!
Also this softening of relations with Iran fits with plans for the PanEurasian Superstate of Greater Israel, China, Russia, and Greater Iran (to include the various ‘Stan’s’) re Israel’s Talpiot programme and China’s Belt n Road… Smart cities, surveillance, AI, robots and drones!
I forgot Assange wasn’t tried, he faced a court to decide if he could be extradited to the US. But he’s still in prison even though he won his extradition case. It’s detention without trial whereas at least this woman was tried by Iran.
The U.K. and the U.S. are both as crooked as the day is long and the worst hypocrites on the planet.
Britain now accuses Iran of meddling in elections.
Everything finally comes to an end. The end for those two won’t be pretty.
Karma is a Bitch.
She was an MI6 asset whose purpose was to stir up civil unrest.
As a UK Taxpayer I would rather spend the cost of a one way ticket for that Liberal loser she ”married” to go to HER country!
Mark Borah……..UK and US are controlled by the JEWS you a Hole!
If it is true, the UK won’t be paying Iran, they’ll just be refunding money paid for tanks.
Without interest!