Hassan Rouhani President of the Islamic Republic of Iran arrives to speak to the Nelson Mandela Peace Summit September 24, 2018 a day before the start of the General Debate of the 73rd session of the General Assembly at the United Nations in New York. AFP/ Don EMMERT)
LONDON — British Prime Minister Theresa May will meet Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in New York Tuesday, where she will press him to release a British-Iranian woman imprisoned in Tehran, a senior government official told reporters.
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who works for the Thomson Reuters Foundation — the media organisation’s philanthropic arm — was arrested at Tehran airport on April 3, 2016.
She is serving a five-year jail sentence for alleged sedition, which she denies.
During a meeting with Rouhani on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, “you can expect the prime minister to raise our ongoing consular cases, including that of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe,” the official said.
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe (L) and her husband, Richard Ratcliffe, in 2011. (CC BY-SA, Wikimedia)
“The prime minister will express serious concern about Nazanin’s ongoing detention and call for her to be released upon humanitarian grounds.”
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British Prime Minister Theresa May smiles when arriving at the informal EU summit in Salzburg, Austria, Thursday, September 20, 2018. (AP Photo/Kerstin Joensson)
On Wednesday, May will hold one-on-one talks with US President Donald Trump, focusing on her hopes of agreeing a trade deal after Britain leaves the European Union.
“They both have a strong commitment to securing a strong UK-US free trade agreement when we’ve left,” the official said.
The pair will also discuss the poisoning of a Russian double agent and his daughter earlier this year in the English city of Salisbury, which London and its allies — including Washington — blamed on Moscow.
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Russia has strongly denied the accusation.
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