On Wednesday, Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s native UK Member of Parliament Tulip Siddiq tweeted a photograph of her on board a aircraft saying she is now on her manner residence.
“It’s been 6 lengthy years – and I am unable to consider I can FINALLY share this picture,” wrote Siddiq. “Nazanin is now within the air flying away from 6 years of hell in Iran.”
UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss stated in a tweet that Zaghari-Ratcliffe and fellow British Iranian nationwide Anoosheh Ashoori “will probably be reunited with their households later in the present day.”
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson hailed their launch as “enormous achievements” for British diplomacy. “I pay tribute to the tireless efforts of those that have labored for six years to make in the present day’s occasions doable,” Johnson wrote in a tweet.
This comes as Truss introduced that the UK had settled a decades-old £400 million ($524 million) debt owed to Iran, which Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian denied was linked to the prisoner launch.
“After extremely complicated and exhaustive negotiations, the greater than 40-year-old debt between the International Military Services and the Ministry of Defense of Iran has now been settled,” Truss stated in assertion to Parliament.
The debt is for undelivered armored automobiles and tanks, initially ordered by Iran however canceled by the UK in response to the Iranian revolution of 1979, based on a analysis briefing printed by the House of Commons Library.
Iran’s state-run Press TV stated that Zaghari-Ratcliffe had been handed over to the UK authorities, with out offering any additional particulars. The nation’s semi-official Fars information company stated she was being transferred to Tehran’s worldwide airport, Imam Khomenei, with a British negotiating workforce.
On Wednesday, Hojjat Kermani, Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s lawyer, instructed CNN he didn’t need to touch upon the newest developments for now.
He earlier instructed Reuters that Zaghari-Ratcliffe and one other detained British-Iranian, Anousheh Ashouri, had been “on their method to the airport in Tehran to go away Iran.”
Mayor of London Sadiq Khan stated he was “delighted” that Zaghari-Ratcliffe had been free of “wrongful imprisonment” in a press release Wednesday.
“Nazanin and her family members have proven nice braveness, power and steadfastness throughout what has been an unimaginably troublesome time, and I need to pay tribute to all those that have campaigned tirelessly for her launch,” stated Khan. “London appears ahead to welcoming her residence.”
Her husband Richard Ratcliffe stated the discharge of his spouse means they will “begin being a traditional household once more.”
Speaking to reporters in London, Ratcliffe stated he hadn’t but spoken to his spouse however that they’d exchanged messages on Wednesday.
He stated she bought picked up by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard at 11:00 a.m. native time (3:30 a.m ET) and that though she “wasn’t actually allowed to talk” he was conscious of her actions.
“Her homecoming is a journey not an arrival. There will probably be an entire course of and hopefully we’ll look again in years to come back and we will probably be a traditional household,” Ratcliffe continued.
On Wednesday, a marketing campaign group which pushed for Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s launch thanked Siddiq, the household’s member of parliament, for her work on the case.
“You have made a distinction @TulipSiddiq! Thanks for all of the wonderful help you’ve got given to #FreeNazanin over these 6 lengthy years,” the group wrote on Twitter.
Husband’s starvation strikes
Zaghari-Ratcliffe was first detained at a Tehran airport in April 2016 following a trip to see her household along with her daughter.
She was accused of working with organizations allegedly making an attempt to overthrow the Iranian regime and was later convicted and sentenced to 5 years in jail.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe and her employer, the Thomson Reuters Foundation, have repeatedly denied the espionage costs towards her.
In April 2021 she was handed a second jail sentence and journey ban on costs of spreading propaganda towards the regime, and misplaced an attraction on her case in October.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe was given British diplomatic safety in 2019 and was designated a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International.
She undertook not less than three starvation strikes throughout her detention, certainly one of them in a determined bid to hunt medical therapy for lumps in her breasts and numbness in her limbs.
Her husband Richard Ratcliffe has additionally carried out starvation strikes in solidarity together with his spouse.
The couple’s daughter, Gabriella, who was simply 22 months previous on the time of her mom’s arrest, is now virtually eight.
In 2019, Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s supporters stated she was transferred to the psychological ward of a hospital in Tehran and was being denied visits from her father.
In February 2020, Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s household stated she believed she had contracted Covid-19 in Evin Prison exterior Tehran.
CNN’s Hamdi Alkhshali, Vasco Cotovio, Nada Bashir, Sarra Alayyan, Zeena Saifi and Lauren Said-Moorhouse contributed to this report.