Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has accused the UK Foreign Office of being complicit in forcing her to sign a letter of false confession to the Iranian government as part of the last-minute terms of her release in March.
The British-Iranian signed the letter at Tehran airport as she waited to find out whether she would be allowed to leave Iran after six years in detention.
The allegations, in an explosive 20-page letter to the foreign secretary, Liz Truss, obtained exclusively by the Guardian, suggest Zaghari-Ratcliffe was shocked when she found out the Foreign Office had agreed this condition as part of her release, adding its actions had “taken a huge personal toll on her and caused her severe trauma”.
She says in the letter written by her lawyers from Redress that “UK officials were complicit in an unlawful act by the Iranian authorities, telling her that she must sign a false confession in circumstances where she effectively had no other choice”.
The lawyers claim “the actions of UK officials appear contrary to the UK policy not to ‘participate in, solicit, encourage or condone the use of torture or mistreatment for any purpose'”. It adds that the Foreign Office actions made the status of other UK detainees in Iran more precarious.
The revelations suggest the Foreign Office and Downing Streethave at best not been straightforward in revealing the terms for her release.
In the letter, the lawyers from Redress say Zaghari-Ratcliffe asserts the requirement to sign the confession has caused her lasting damage, and made her fearful of reprisals in London.
They say: “Zaghari-Ratcliffe had resisted intense pressure to make a false confession on many occasions during interrogations and during her eight-and-a-half months in solitary confinement. To be told to sign a false confession by her own government after all she had survived was deeply distressing to her.”
In the final three days before her release, Redress said Iranian officials accused Zaghari-Ratcliffe of being a spy, taunted her by offering her release and then threatening to revoke it, and attempted to, and eventually forced her, to sign a document confessing to unspecified crimes.
The letter reveals the British ambassador called her on 14 March and told her she had to attend a meeting with Iranian officials to collect a new Iranian passport, even though her Iranian lawyer had advised her not to attend.
The letter says: “The ambassador picked her up in an embassy car, drove her to the government office and waited outside. Again Zaghari-Ratcliffe was required to attend the office alone. She was accused by Iranian officials of being a spy, was told that if she loved Iran she wouldn’t have done what she did, and asked if she regretted it. She was informed they were exchanging her for half a billion dollars. They then pressured her to sign a document purporting to confess to unspecified charges and promising not to sue the Iranian government. The document appeared to be a standardised form with blank spaces to fill in details of the alleged crimes and the confession. Zaghari-Ratcliffe steadfastly refused to sign this document.”
At this point she recounts in the letter a “particularly sinister official was brought into the room to scare her. He accused her of being a spy and ruining Iran and told her, ‘if you don’t sign this, you won’t go home’. Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe eventually relented to writing out a separate document in her own handwriting which removed the words ‘I confess’.”
The ambassador assured her afterwards that the document had no legal standing.
English
Arabic
Chinese (Simplified)
Dutch
French
German
Italian
Portuguese
Russian
Spanish