Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

What lessons can Britain learn from Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s ordeal?

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and her husband Richard (Credit: BBC)

‘How many foreign secretaries does it take for someone to come home? Five?’ Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has spoken for the first time in public, giving a press conference alongside her husband Richard and MP Tulip Siddiq this lunchtime. She was grateful for her release from Iran, but also very clear that she wasn’t as thankful to the British government as Richard, who praised the foreign secretary and officials for saying they would bring Nazanin home and for doing that.

She argued that she should have been brought home six years ago, and that she had given up hope after hearing multiple foreign secretaries over the years assuring her that they would bring her home, and that it was eventually going to be one of them who succeeded. ‘It took a very long time for the politicians to sort it out,’ she said.

It was a moving session and there were moments where Nazanin declined to answer questions, including what it was like to be held in solitary confinement.

Isabel Hardman
Written by
Isabel Hardman
Isabel Hardman is assistant editor of The Spectator and author of Why We Get the Wrong Politicians. She also presents Radio 4’s Week in Westminster.

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