The husband of British aid worker and dual British-Iranian citizen Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has gone on a hunger strike to protest a second jail sentence imposed on his wife in Iran, Richard Ratcliffe began the fast on Sunday, in front of Britain’s Foreign Office in London. He is calling on British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to use diplomatic channels to secure his wife’s release. It is his second hunger strike in two years. The first saw his daughter returned to him in London from Tehran. He claims that his wife is being held by Iran in an attempt to recoup $550 million that Britain owes Iran over a nearly 50-year debt.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe, 43, had spent nearly five years in an Iranian jail and another year under house arrest on charges of “propaganda against the system,” in part for attending a demonstration outside the Iranian embassy in London and being interviewed by the BBC Persian network more than a decade ago. She was released from house arrest in March, but immediately called back to court over a new propaganda charges and was handed an additional one-jail sentence and a year after in which she cannot leave the country. Last week, an Iranian appeals court upheld the sentence.
She was arrested in April 2016 while visiting her parents in Iran with her British-born daughter, Gabriella, who is now seven years old. She has not seen her husband in person since 2016, according to the BBC. She was working as a project manager for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charity arm of the news agency, at the time of her arrest.