For almost two years he has longed for the safe return of his wife Nazanin after she was arrested in Iran and jailed on bogus charges.
Just a few days ago, Richard Ratcliffe’s hopes for her early release were so high that he bought her a ticket for tonight’s carol concert at the Royal Albert Hall.
But after the Iranian regime issued a devastating new threat that her sentence could be doubled, Nazanin will mark Christmas Day – the 631st day of her imprisonment – not at home but in a grim, crowded prison.
Yesterday Mr Ratcliffe, 42, spoke to The Mail on Sunday about a week in which her family’s optimism had given way to fresh agony.
‘She could be in court again tomorrow, facing trial for the second set of charges we thought had been dropped,’ he said. ‘Or she could be released and on a plane to England. Or she might simply phone me from prison, as she can do most days.’
Nazanin’s plight began in April 2016 as she prepared to fly home to London after visiting her parents in Iran. Her baby daughter, Gabriella, was wrenched from her arms and she was arrested on unspecified ‘national security’ offences.
Richard Ratcliffe’s hopes for his wife Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe to be released that he bought her a carol concert ticket (Pictured: Nazanin and Richard together in 2008 at Boxhill in Surrey)
Her daughter, Gabriella (pictured here wearing a pinafore her mother made), is living in Tehran with Nazanin’s parents. She visits her mother in prison but can only speak to her father over Skype
The 38-year-old, who has dual British-Iranian citizenship, spent the first nine months in solitary confinement, until she was moved to a dormitory in Tehran’s Evin ‘House of Detention’, where she remains. Her physical health has deteriorated and, while her parents in Iran care for Gabriella, now aged three, the pain of separation and the uncertainty of her situation has left her mental state on a knife edge.
Mr Ratcliffe was told on Monday that Nazanin would not face a second trial for ‘spreading propaganda’, which could result in a ten-year sentence.
He was told by her lawyer on Wednesday that she was officially recorded on the Iranian prison database as due for early release.
The following day, his optimism was palpable. Calling them ‘incredibly positive developments’, he added that, should she be allowed to fly home, he planned to hold a press conference at Heathrow.
Instead, Friday brought a devastating setback. Tehran’s top judge, Gholamhossein Esmaili, claimed Nazanin ‘could not possibly’ be released until after her second trial – which, it seems, has not been cancelled after all.
‘Nazanin Zaghari has two cases –in the first, she has been convicted, but the second has yet to go to court and there is no verdict,’ the judge told a news agency controlled by Iran’s hardline Revolutionary Guard. ‘The court can convict or acquit her. If she is convicted, we don’t know what the sentence will be. So we don’t know when she will be able to be released.’
After a recent mistake where he suggested she was ‘training journalists’, Boris Johnson tried to make amends by pleading her case on a visit to Iran (pictured, a meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Zavad Zarif) which sparked new – if short-lived – optimism for her release
Even now, Mr Ratcliffe refuses to give up. ‘I accept that the best I can hope for before Christmas is a phone call,’ he said yesterday.
‘Then again, all this could just be posturing, a way for hardliners to make their point. I can’t control the game being played, the negotiations behind the scenes. But if this is poker, it does make me think, “What’s going on?” ’
Nazanin’s plight became high profile last month after Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson appeared to suggest that she was ‘training journalists’ rather than simply visiting her family in Tehran.
The gaffe sparked outrage in the UK and played into the hands of Iranian hardliners seeking to bring new ‘spying’ charges against her.
The Foreign Secretary tried to make amends a fortnight ago by pleading her case on a visit to Iran which sparked new – if short-lived – optimism for her release.
Mr Ratcliffe said the uncertainty had put her physical and mental health in jeopardy.
He described phone calls from jail in which she could not get the words out through her tears, and his fears that she might have developed breast cancer. Medical tests have since shown that she has not.
Mr Ratcliffe revealed that since Mr Johnson’s visit the frequency of Nazanin’s phone calls (pictured with her husband Richard and daughter Gabriella) has risen from once or twice to five or six times a week
Family photos in their home in London where the couple hopes to be reunited as soon as possible. She is serving five years for taking part in mass protests in 2009, which she denies
In a letter to her husband earlier this year, Nazanin wrote of her daughter: ‘The most painful part of this whole affair is that neither of us has witnessed our daughter grow up. Neither of us.’
Richard says: ‘She’s fragile, up and down. And any hesitation in my voice causes her great upset – for weeks she wanted me to promise she would be home for Christmas, when obviously I just couldn’t, however much I longed for it.
‘And she has PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder] attacks – flashbacks to the months that she spent in solitary before her trial and sentence.’
Since autumn 2016, Nazanin has been held in a prison ‘ward’ – a group of dormitories with bunk beds where about 40 prisoners sleep, six or eight to a room, grouped around a communal kitchen and living area. Mr Ratcliffe revealed that since Mr Johnson’s visit the frequency of her phone calls has risen from once or twice to five or six times a week.
His wife also gets two visits a week from their daughter, who since Nazanin was arrested has been staying with her parents in Tehran. ‘They’re not separated by screens or anything when Gabriella goes to the prison. They meet in a room with tables, and she’s got to know the other kids there, who visit their mothers too.’
Gabriella and her father talk via Skype three times a week. But it is, he admits, a meagre substitute for a normal father-daughter relationship. ‘Her idea of who or what Daddy is, is not so strong as it was. We can see each other, and she likes to show off her drawings. But she doesn’t speak English.
Mr Ratcliffe was given fresh hope when an Iranian lawyer told him that she was now officially ‘marked for early release’
‘She goes to nursery school, and she knows she’s different to the other kids, because Mummy is in prison. I think the hard thing is she’s very attached to her grandmother. So just as she had one mummy, and then lost her, when Naz is finally released, it’s going to happen again.’
Nazanin’s own jail conditions have, Richard says, improved. She and her fellow ward inmates have access to an exercise yard, a television and books. ‘Their ethos is, they’re not to sit there feeling sorry for themselves or watching mindless TV, but learning stuff that will stretch them,’ he says.
Meanwhile, his own life is on hold. The shelves in the family’s flat, in a modern block in West Hampstead, North London, are still lined with Gabriella’s toys, but those of a one-year-old baby, not a three-year-old girl. ‘I don’t watch the news much. I don’t like watching myself and it’s a way of avoiding the enormity,’ he says. ‘My protective bubble is to keep on battling away, and when the media coverage picked up a month ago [after Mr Johnson’s comments] it took me a while to notice. But my mum watches everything.’
If Nazanin is not released in the New Year, Mr Ratcliffe and his supporters will escalate their campaign. ‘This is like a staircase. When it’s time to climb the next step, we will. There is no alternative,’ he says.
‘Above all, I know she wants me to carry on – it helps keep her going, too. We have to show them: you’re not going to break us.’
Mr Ratcliffe’s life has been on hold since his wife was jailed. The shelves in their flat in West Hampstead, North London, are lined with Gabriella’s toys – but they are ones for a one-year-old baby, not a three-year-old girl
Meanwhile, there is Christmas to get through. Mr Ratcliffe says: ‘I’ll go down to my parents in Fleet for Christmas Eve, and stay until Boxing Day.
‘Normally I’m a vegetarian, but a few weeks before Naz went to Iran, I got ill with pneumonia.
‘When she left, she made me promise I’d keep on eating meat until she was home, to build my strength up. I’ve kept that promise, so I’ll be having turkey.’
Nazanin’s birthday is on Boxing Day. Richard said: ‘We’ll have a cake, and I’ll show it to Gabriella on Skype and we’ll talk about that, and then she’ll visit Mummy. Assuming nothing dramatic happens, they’ll celebrate Nazanin’s birthday together, in prison.’
Richard last spoke to his wife at noon yesterday. ‘She wasn’t distraught but she was quite low,’ he said, ‘because we had hoped that this would be the day she’d be released, and because of what was said by the judge on Friday.
‘But I still haven’t given up hope for today. There are good signs and bad signs, but I’m still convinced this is moving in the right direction, though there are clearly bumps in the road.’