British and US government officials deny that a prisoner exchange was negotiated with Iran and the disbursement of billions of dollars to secure the release of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who holds British and Iranian citizenship.
A spokesman for the area where Zaghari-Ratcliffe and his family are based said he was unaware such an agreement had been reached.
“All I know is that the ambassador in Tehran may have visited Nazanin, but he didn’t say anything about an agreement,” Tulip Seddik said. The talk was mainly about the coronavirus, and whether Nazanin would get the vaccine he requested.
According to Iranian state television, Zaghari-Ratcliffe will be released if the UK pays its alleged debts from an arms deal to Tehran, and an agreement is reached with the US on the transfer of an Iranian national arrested in Australia.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian dual national working for international organizations and then Reuters news agency, recruited correspondents for the BBC’s Persian broadcast, whom Iranian authorities designated as espionage and was imprisoned in 2016. Although his original sentence had expired, he was sentenced He was charged in late April another year for anti-regime propaganda. Her husband, who has been fighting for his wife’s release from the start, sees the messages from Tehran as a good sign.
