Tulip Siddiq has campaigned nobly for the return of her constituent, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe. The Labour MP is again doing her bit to try and persuade the Iranian government to free the British-Iranian mum, who has been locked up on trumped-up charges in Iran.
‘After over four years in Evin Prison, Nazanin has been under house arrest in Iran and is unable to leave the country,’ write Siddiq and the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, in the Evening Standard today. ‘Though responsibility for her predicament lies with Iran, there is more that the UK Government could be doing to help her,’ she writes.
She’s got a point: Boris Johnson has made the situation worse, not better, for Nazanin, by clumsily intervening to suggest that she was training journalists. Yet while Siddiq’s campaigning on behalf of Nazanin is welcome, her criticism of foreign governments for unfairly locking up innocent people seems curiously selective.
Will Siddiq find her voice when it comes to speaking up on behalf of relatives of Bangladeshis who have gone missing?
In Bangladesh – under the rule of Siddiq’s aunt, Sheikh Hasina – hundreds of people have gone missing.
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