Husband of jailed British-Iranian woman stages hunger strike outside embassy in U.K.
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was detained in 2006 after being accused of plotting against the Iranian government
All eyes are on Iran right now as tension with the United States continues to escalate.
But Richard Ratcliffe is staging a hunger strike in front of the Iranian embassy in London, England, to attract attention to a much more personal story — his wife's continued imprisonment in the country.
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian dual citizen, has been detained in Iran since 2016. She's charged with espionage and plotting to overthrow the government — charges she and her family deny.
As It Happens host Carol Off spoke to Ratcliffe about why he is joining his wife — who is simultaneously staging a hunger strike in prison. Here is part of their conversation.
Mr. Ratcliffe, you have not eaten in seven days now. How are you holding up?
Yeah, definitely feeling quite tired now. I think the first day I felt hungry. After that, not so much. But but now I'm getting quite dozy.
Why have you decided to join your wife, who is on a hunger strike in Iran?
Partly because she's on hunger strike behind prison walls and no one gets to see what that is — no one gets to see what that suffering looks like. And partly because it's not the first hunger strike she has done.
So I thought that ... it was important that if she was going to go through it, that I would.
Why do you believe that she is in prison? Why do you think the Iranian government did that to her?
She was part of a wave of foreign nationals, including some Canadians, who were taken almost as bargaining chips to be used by the Iranian authorities.
Do you know why? Is there anything that you can point to as to why she was chosen for this treatment?
It's profiling. Clearly it was because she worked for a media charity and they could then pretend that she was connected to the world's media.
The people that were taken were either academics, or in some cases businessmen, or in some cases people they could say sort of present as some kind of social activists.
She is in Evin prison, is that right?
That's correct. So, Evin Prison. The big prison in Tehran.
Many political prisoners are in Evin. And as you mentioned, Canadians are there and have been there. We've had a high profile journalist from Canada who actually died in that prison from very harsh treatment. Do you have any idea how your wife is being treated in Evin prison?
The beginning, it was very tough. She was kept in the first year in solitary confinement in a room about the size of a double bed with three blankets — one as a pillow, one to sleep on and one to use the blanket — and no window in the room. And just a light bulb on the whole time — all sorts of trauma as a result of that.
Now she's in the women's political ward. So you're right, there are some really quite amazing women in the cells with her, some very important human rights activists. They look after each other. They're much better.
So her conditions now seem more akin to a normal prison and she's OK.
But she is now facing more prosecution, is that right?
A second court case was opened against [her] back in 2017 and gets closed and reopened every so often. It was reopened, most recently, last month.
Why do you believe that the Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson may have had something to do with why your wife is being prosecuted again?
Well, I think he didn't help. A second court case was actually opened against her immediately prior to him making some comments in the House of Commons, which made her situation worse.
But it was justified on the basis of his comments where he said in Parliament, the British Parliament, that she'd been training journalists when she had just been on a holiday.
Did Boris Johnson reverse and clarify what he said?
Eventually, he did clarify that the government position was that she was on holiday.
More to the point, the way he then conducted afterwards — where he undertook to link Nazanin's release to a debt the U.K. owed — made signals in the British media that it was going to be paid, and then he didn't pay it, made things more complicated for her and for others that were subsequently taken.
To give people a few more details about that, because it's very important, that there is this debt that Iran has wanted repaid, since the 1970s. And Boris Johnson suggested that that might happen. How did that get tangled up with your wife's case?
Having made it clear that that was his ambition to sort, but then that money not turning up, obviously then there was anger in Iran and then more people were arrested.
Given ... how tense things are right now between Iran and the United States ... do you worry that your wife is now caught in a very, very complex geopolitical game that's being played out?
There's certainly a lot of tension. It's certainly true for all of the foreign nationals held that we're in the middle of a swirling storm with different different dynamics. And yes, I think things are not looking good at all in terms of Western-Iranian relations.
But they keep changing. So part of my job is to sort of keep calm and focus on Nazanin. Obviously, us sitting in front of the Iranian embassy, being accused of barricading it — we're not, but we're being accused of that — creates its own tensions.
We will see how things develop. I think your basic question, which is how easy is it to get over this when tensions are very high? You're right. It's much harder.
Written by Allie Jaynes and John McGill. Interview produced by Allie Jaynes. Q&A edited for length and clarity.