British-Iranian woman Zaghari-Ratcliffe back in court after 5 years in prison

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A trial to present fresh charges against a British-Iranian woman detained for five years in Iran convened Sunday, her supporters said, casting uncertainty over her future following her release from prison. Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe appeared in court in Tehran to face new charges of spreading “propaganda against Iran,” wrote Tulip Siddiq, a member of the British Parliament who represents her area of London and campaigned for her release.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe

A verdict was expected next week, Siddiq added. Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s lawyer did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The new trial came a week after Zaghari-Ratcliffe completed her prison sentence on widely refuted spying charges.

Although she was allowed to remove her ankle monitor and leave house arrest when her sentence formally ended, she remains unable to fl y home to her family in London. Zaghari-Ratcliffe, 42, was sentenced to five years in jail after being convicted of plotting the overthrow of Iran’s government, a charge that she, her supporters and rights groups vigorously deny. While employed at the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of the news agency, she was taken into custody at the airport as she was returning home to Britain after visiting family in the capital of Tehran in 2016.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s yearslong case has sparked international outrage and strained ties between Britain and Iran. Her supporters have described her as collateral in a long-running dispute over a debt of some 400 million pounds ($530 million) owed to Iran by London, a payment the late Iranian Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi made for Chieftain tanks that were never delivered. The shah abandoned the throne in 1979 and the Islamic Revolution installed the clerically overseen system that endures today. (AP)

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