British-Iranian woman imprisoned in Tehran ends hunger strike
Husband of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe relieved his wife eating after 15 days without food to protest her imprisonment since 2016 for sedition; she denies any wrongdoing
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe with her daughter, Gabriella, in 2016. (AFP)
LONDON — A British-Iranian mother jailed in Tehran since 2016 on sedition charges she denies has ended her hunger strike after 15 days, her husband said Saturday.
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s husband, Richard Ratcliffe, told BBC Radio that his wife had eaten some porridge with apple and banana.
“I’m relieved because I wouldn’t have wanted her to push it much longer,” said Ratcliffe, who also went without food for 15 days in solidarity with his wife.
Ratcliffe had spent much of that time picketing Iran’s embassy in London, urging whoever is to succeed outgoing British Prime Minister Theresa May to make his wife’s case a priority.
Richard Ratcliffe, husband of British-Iranian woman Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who is imprisoned in Iran, takes part in a hunger strike outside the Iranian embassy in solidarity with his wife and to call for her release, in London on June 25, 2019. (Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP)
Zaghari-Ratcliffe, 40, began refusing food to mark her daughter Gabriella’s fifth birthday.
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She was arrested in April 2016 as she was leaving Iran after taking then 22-month-old Gabriella to visit her family.
She was sentenced to five years for allegedly trying to topple the Iranian government.
A project manager with the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the media group’s philanthropic arm, she denies all charges.
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The case has added to long-standing tensions between Tehran and London, which is a major arms supplier to Iran’s arch-enemy Saudi Arabia.
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