British-Iranian Charity Worker Begins Hunger Strike in Iran Jail

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a project manager with the Thomson Reuters Foundation who is being held in jail in Iran, has begun a hunger strike over her mistreatment and to demand her release, her husband, Richard Ratcliffe, announced on Saturday. Ratcliffe added that he will be fasting concurrently with his wife in front of the Iranian embassy in London. The British-Iranian was arrested in April 2016 at a Tehran airport as she was returning to the United Kingdom with her daughter from a family visit. She was sentenced to five years in jail on espionage charges, accusations denied by herself, her family and the Thomson Reuters Foundation. Ratcliffe urged that British embassy officials in Iran be allowed to check on his wife’s health, as well as for Iranian authorities to grant him a visa if she were not released in the next few weeks. UK Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt tweeted a message on Saturday, directed to the Islamic Republic, saying, “do the right thing, show the world your humanity and let this innocent woman home.” The hunger strikes by husband and wife come amid heightened tensions between London and Tehran. A day earlier, Hunt accused Iran of being responsible for Thursday’s attacks on oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman, an allegation the Islamic Republic denies.