UK’s Johnson calls Iranian counterpart over detained woman
Foreign secretary said Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe ‘was teaching journalism’ – a charge she denies – leading to an unscheduled hearing
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LONDON — Britain’s foreign secretary phoned his Iranian counterpart Tuesday to express “his anxiety over the continued suffering” of a British-Iranian woman being held in Iran.
Boris Johnson has been under pressure to publicly correct a statement he made about Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian who is serving a five-year sentence for plotting the “soft toppling” of Iran’s government.
Johnson told lawmakers last week that Zaghari-Ratcliffe was “simply teaching people journalism” when she was detained last year. Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s family and her employer, the Thomson Reuters Foundation, insist she was merely visiting her family.
After the remarks Zaghari-Ratcliffe was summoned to an unscheduled court hearing, where Johnson’s comments were cited as proof she was using propaganda to act against the regime. The authorities threatened to increase her sentence.
Britain’s Foreign Office said Johnson called his Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Javad Zarif on Tuesday “to raise again his serious concerns about the case and ensure his remarks are not misrepresented.”
Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of the news agency, has said Zaghari-Ratcliffe works as a project manager. It said she is not a journalist and has never trained journalists at the foundation.
The Times of Israel Community.