My wife is a hostage of Iran. The world must work to free her.
My wife is a hostage of Iran. The world must work to free her.
I am an accountant by trade, but, for the past three and a half years, my job has been to fight for the freedom of my wife, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe. She has been imprisoned in Iran since April 2016, falsely accused of plotting to overthrow the Iranian regime.
Nazanin is a British charity worker and mother, arrested on holiday while visiting her family with our 22-month-old daughter, Gabriella, who was herself allowed to return to Britain only last month. Nazanin is one of a number of innocent people Iran is holding hostage to use as diplomatic leverage in disputes with Britain, the United States, France and others.
The Iran hostage crisis that began 40 years ago this week, when radical Iranian students stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, is now over. But for us, the crisis is ongoing.
Our experience is a profound cruelty. The isolation and interrogations, the threats and torture Nazanin has endured — which I describe in the video above — are spectacularly unfair, judged illegal by the United Nations and others. Even after she is released, it will take us a long time to mend.
But alongside the cruelty, we have experienced overwhelming kindness from ordinary people. Our online petition has received 2.5 million supporters. We received thousands of visitors this year in front of the Iranian Embassy in London, where I was on hunger strike in solidarity with Nazanin’s own hunger strike in prison.
With human rights campaigns, there can be a risk of campaigner hagiography. I am aware that much of the support for my family stems from our position of privilege. I am middle class and white, and have an accent like a BBC presenter. If I worked in a kebab shop, this might be different, a story seen or heard just once before the carousel moves on.
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Read more at: The Washington Post
Iran Briefing | News Press Focus on Human Rights Violation by IRGC, Iran Human Rights