According to UK Middle East Minister Amanda Milling, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps aka the Iranian IRGC forced Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, an Iranian-British dual citizen who was imprisoned in Iran for six years, to sign a fabricated confession before they would release her.
Although Tehran normally requires all detainees to sign a confession before they are released, even if it is fraudulent, Milling said that the UK officials in charge of the matter did not compel it.
In spite of her continuous denials of guilt throughout her six years in prison, Zaghari-Ratcliffe believes that while the UK Foreign Office was negotiating her release, Iranian demands were given in and she was persuaded to confess.
British officials were there when the confession was signed in March of this year, according to Milling’s testimony before Parliament, but they were just there to inform Zaghara-Ratcliffe of the demands made by the Iranian IRGC.
She claimed that she made the decision to sign the document “given the scenario Iran put Nazanin in at the airport.” “She wasn’t compelled to do anything by a UK official. Iran has a custom of making prisoners sign papers before being freed.
Zaghari-MP Ratcliffe’s Tulip Siddiq stated during the parliamentary session that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard had attempted to force Nazanin to write out and sign a document listing the crimes she had been falsely accused of, admitting guilt for them, pleading for mercy, and pledging not to sue or criticize the Iranian government for days prior to her release.
She was once more asked to do this by Iran at the Tehran airport on March 16 — the day she was finally permitted to fly back to the UK — but she tore up the piece of paper instead.
“She didn’t break and give Iran what they wanted until a UK official insisted that she sign it in order to board the plane that was waiting to take her home.
“Nazanin went home, but the toll this had on my constituents after six years in jail is unfathomable and unacceptable,” said the politician. She is terrified and worries about the effects on her family, her future, and other British nationals who are currently being held captive in Iran.