Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe: Hopes jailed British mother was about to be freed dealt blow by mention of 'second trial'

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s possible early release from an Iranian jail may be scuppered by a prospective second trial for “spreading propaganda”, a leading Iranian official has suggested.

Gholamhossein Esmaili, the head of the justice department in Tehran province, was quoted as saying that the dual-national charity worker has “another ongoing case against her in court, and we do not know if she would be found guilty or not”.

This seemed a flat contradiction of an earlier official statement that had dismissed suggestions of a second trial and possible extra jail time as the “unreal reports” of Western media.

The apparent contradiction has cast doubts on hopes that were raised on Thursday when it emerged that the Iranian judiciary had categorised Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe as “eligible for early release” from her original five-year sentence, imposed in September 2016, for threatening Iranian security.

Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s husband Richard Ratcliffe told The Independent the latest development was “bewildering”. The early release eligibility had seemed to herald an extraordinary turnaround for Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe.

She had come close to a nervous breakdown in November, after Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson erroneously told MPs she had been teaching journalists when in fact she had been on holiday in Iran with her daughter Gabriella.

Iranian media gleefully portrayed Mr Johnson’s comment as an accidental confession that Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe was a spy, and days afterwards she was told she faced a new charge of spreading hostile propaganda.

Amid fears this could double her original jail sentence, it was widely reported that she would appear in court to face this new charge on 10 December.

But after Boris Johnson visited Iran and discussed her case on 9-10 December, the semi-official Fars News Agency said Moussa Qazanfarabadi, head of Tehran’s Revolutionary Court, had “strongly rejected” reports she might face a second trial that could lengthen her jail term.

“The western media release unreal reports,” Mr Qazanfarabadi was quoted as saying.

This gave Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe and her family the impression that the second trial had “disappeared”.

So when her lawyer noted that an Iranian judiciary database was now listing her as “eligible for early release” from her original sentence, hopes were raised that she might be back home in north London within a couple of weeks.

Her husband told The Independent on Thursday: “It’s not the same as a decision having been made to release, but it is a very clear positive sign towards that.

“The lawyer also said: ‘I think they are just going to finalise the paperwork.’ The lawyer’s estimate was within a couple of weeks: “It’s now a question of when not if.”

But on Friday Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency quoted Mr Esmaili as saying: “Iran’s judiciary cannot confirm any of the claims in Western media about this case.

“Besides serving her current sentence, she has also another ongoing case against her in court ... We do not know if she would be found guilty or not.”

Reacting to Mr Esmaili’s statement, Mr Ratcliffe said he was refusing to give up hope of an early release, while seeking to get clarity about developments in Iran.

He said “It [the apparent contradiction] is bewildering and doesn’t make sense.

“But my job is keep hope alive. I am going to wait to see what happens before giving up hope.”

He added: “I expect that right to the end there will be twists and turns. This is a bump. The question is: how big a bump?”

Mr Ratcliffe had earlier cautioned that some influential sections of Iranian society were likely to oppose his wife’s early release. “It feels like there are still people trying to block,” he told The Independent.

There had, he explained, been “a backlash” in some quarters against Mr Johnson’s visit.

Mr Ratcliffe said: “After the Foreign Secretary visited, Ayatollah Ahmad Alamolhoda, the Friday prayer leader for Masshad, Iran’s holiest city, called Boris Johnson a “liar”, a “clown” and a “womaniser”.

“He didn’t name her, but he basically said – in an address that was televised – that Nazanin was a ‘dirty spy’ who shouldn’t be released.

“The hardline press has also been saying ‘we shouldn’t kow-tow to these foreigners who come and demand we release our prisoners when we are a sovereign country’.”