The Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary ramped up pressure on Iran to release a charity worker jailed in Tehran during talks in New York.
Theresa May told Iranian president Hassan Rouhani she had ‘serious concerns’ about the jailing of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe.
The British-Iranian mother was sentenced to five years in jail after being accused of spying by Tehran’s Islamist regime, a charge she vehemently denies.
In talks on the fringes of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), Mrs May called for Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s release.
The move marks an escalation of the Government’s campaign on behalf of the mother-of-one, coming after Jeremy Hunt demanded rapid action to secure her freedom in his first face-to-face meeting with Iran’s foreign minister.
Aid worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was sentenced to five years in prison in 2016. She was briefly reunited with her daughter last month
Theresa May told Iranian president Hassan Rouhani in New York today (pictured) that she had ‘serious concerns’ about the jailing of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe
The Foreign Secretary told Javad Zarif that Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe must be returned home quickly.
During talks on the UNGA sidelines, he said: ‘I again pressed for Nazanin’s swift release – she deserves to be back at home with her family,’ Mr Hunt said in a statement.
It is also ‘absolutely essential’ the Iranian government take steps to ensure the release of ‘a number of detained dual nationals’, he added.
Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who works for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, was detained at Imam Khomeini airport in April 2016.
Following intensive diplomatic efforts, Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe was granted temporary release last month.
She spent three days with her family, reuniting with her four-year-old daughter Gabriella. She was quoted as saying she ‘cried so much’ and said she wanted her child to ‘have a mummy again’.
But her request for an extension was denied, prompting husband Richard Ratcliffe to write an open letter to Mr Zarif calling the short release a ‘cruel game’.
Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe has consistently denied all the spying allegations, insisting that she was on holiday to introduce Gabriella to her family.
Mrs May is visiting New York to deliver a speech at the UN general assembly tonight
Mrs May also came face to face with Emmanuel Macron (left) for the first time since he brutally rejected her Chequers plan for Brexit last week
Mr Hunt’s predecessor, Boris Johnson, was accused of extending her sentence after mistakenly describing her as a journalist who was working on her trip.
Mrs May also used her meeting with President Rouhani to underline the UK’s commitment to the Iran nuclear deal.
Britain and its European allies responded with dismay to US president Donald Trump’s decision to pull out of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that relieved sanctions on Tehran in return for an end to Iran’s military nuclear ambitions.