Theresa May to Discuss 'Nazanin Zaghari's Freedom' with Rouhani

A British government official has stated that Theresa May, the Prime Minister of the UK, will discuss the release of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe during her meeting with Hassan Rouhani, the President of Iran, on Tuesday, October 25. According to Reuters, this official added that the British Prime Minister will express her serious concerns regarding the continued detention of Nazanin Zaghari and will call for her release based on humanitarian principles. Hassan Rouhani is traveling to New York to attend the United Nations General Assembly and is scheduled to meet with several world leaders, including the British Prime Minister and the President of France. Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is a dual Iranian-British citizen who has been sentenced to five years in prison on charges of attempting to overthrow the Iranian government and has been imprisoned for two and a half years. Ms. Zaghari was an employee of the Thomson Reuters Foundation, and previous and current British Foreign Ministers' negotiations with Iranian officials for her release have not been effective. In this context, on September 19, the UK advised dual Iranian-British citizens to avoid traveling to Iran as London has limited ability to secure their release if they are detained. Earlier in September, Alistair Burt, the UK’s Middle East Minister, visited Tehran to discuss various diplomatic issues, including the situation of dual nationals detained in Iran, but it seems this effort has not yielded results. Abbas Adalat, a mathematics and computer science professor at Imperial College London, is another Iranian-British citizen imprisoned in Iran. He was arrested in early May this year while visiting a relative in Tehran for a workshop. Another example is Kamal Foroughi, who was arrested by Iranian security agents about seven years ago and remains imprisoned. He was tried on espionage charges and sentenced to eight years in prison.