Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe tells Andy Murray of ‘joy’ of watching him play from prison

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Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has said watching Andy Murray’s Wimbledon match from solitary confinement in Iran’s Evin prison in 2016 gave her a connection and escape that brought her closer to home through sport.

Imprisoned in Evin without books or newspapers, she said she was able to watch two TV channels in her cell: one of Iranian soap operas and another of sports. The first day, she watched the latter to find Murray playing in the Wimbledon tournament he would later win.

“You had no idea where I watched you, and I was in solitary in Evin,” Zaghari-Ratcliffe told him in an interview on BBC’s Radio 4 Today programme, which she was guest editing.

“I can’t tell you how joyful it was and I was ecstatic just to see you win,” Zaghari-Ratcliffe told Murray, recounting an email she sent him 2016.

“That’s made me quite emotional hearing you speak about that, so I appreciate you telling that to me,” responded Murray, his voice wavering.

After asking for more details about her “incredible story” he said: “I find myself getting quite emotional that someone could be treated in that way.”

Zaghari-Ratcliffe was arrested in 2016 on accusations of spying by Iranian authorities. After visiting her parents in Tehran, she was separated from her daughter as she was due to board a flight home from Iran. After a long-running campaign by her husband and negotiation between the British and Iranian governments, she returned home to the UK in March.

“I was angry, I was frustrated, I was disappointed more than anything else that it took the world a long time to get me back to my child more than anything else,” she said. “I think having a child and being a mother had changed my experience of incarceration.”

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards arrested seven people with links to Britain on Sunday over anti-government protests, according to reports. In response, the shadow foreign secretary, David Lammy, called on the government to urgently put in place Magnitsky sanctions – which target those who have violated human rights – against those involved.

During the programme Zaghari-Ratcliffe explored freedom through interviews spanning food, comedy and sport against the backdrop of ongoing protests and executions in Iran.

The foreign affairs committee launched an inquiry in April into state-level hostage situations. The inquiry, which is intended to focus on challenges the Foreign Office faces when dealing with countries exercising extra-judicial detention, will examine Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s release, along with Anoosheh Ashoori, who was released in March after five years of imprisonment in Iran.

The Conservative MP Alicia Kearns said hostage taking had become industrialised in recent years by Iran, China and Turkey, and that it should not take a family to go public for the government to take substantive action on their case.

“I do think Richard and Nazanin changed the world’s awareness of hostage-taking, and that’s something that was a great service to our nation and the wider world because they changed that conversation so that now there is more discussion about state hostage-taking,” she said.

“The Foreign Office exists to help foreign nationals when they’re in trouble abroad, and that is sometimes forgotten.”

Speaking to Julian Assange’s wife, Stella Assange, who takes her two children, aged three and five, to visit their father at Belmarsh high-security prison in London, Zaghari-Ratcliffe said her daughter had insisted on visiting her in prison with a pair of socks and other “random things”.

Assange said one of her sons would pick daisies from the prison lawn to hide them in his pocket, which she left for the prison officers to take. Assange has been imprisoned in Belmarsh for three years facing extradition and trial in the US over WikiLeaks.

“I think it doesn’t matter where you are, whether you’re in Evin or you’re in Belmarsh in England, the visit rooms with kids has to be some sort of a very emotional, strange scene, people cannot be indifferent about it,” said Zaghari-Ratcliffe. “I was an emotional wreck, but I often wondered how she felt about it.”

“For a very long time, I couldn’t forgive those people who have done that to me, and to separate me from my child. But then I had to convince myself that I have to survive, so I have to put all of that away,” she said. “We don’t know how strong we are. Human beings are so strong, but we don’t know until we are tested.”