THE husband of jailed mother Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has accused Boris Johnson of “obviously” making his wife’s plight worse – hours after the Tory frontrunner denied blundering during his time as Foreign Secretary.
Richard Ratcliffe, whose wife has been in prison in Iran for more than three years, criticised the Tory leadership hopeful after he insisted comments he made during his time as Foreign Secretary didn’t “make any difference” to her sentence.
Johnson told MPs in 2017 Zaghari-Ratcliffe had been in Iran “teaching people journalism” – despite her family’s insistence he was on holiday visiting relatives. The comments were later used during a trial by Iranian authorities against her.
Asked about the gaffe during a BBC hustings on Tuesday night, Johnson accused those criticising his remarks of “exculpating” the Iranian regime.
“In that case, it didn’t, I think, make any difference,” he said. “If you point the finger at the UK, all you are doing is exculpating those who are truly responsible, which is the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.”
But Ratcliffe, who has joined his wife in a hunger strike to raise awareness of her case, said Johnson’s comments had had a “traumatic effect” on her.
“Of course they had consequences,” he told BBC Radio 4 yesterday.
“The main difference they had was obviously they enabled a propaganda campaign that was run against Nazanin. We saw, a couple of weeks. .. afterwards, [Iran] accusing her of being a spy and the Foreign Secretary approved it, which obviously had traumatic effects for her. It was used to justify a second court case, probably caused a second court case, was used to justify it.”
Ratcliffe also accused Johnson of suggesting a £400 million debt the Iranian government claims is owed by the UK was set to be paid in a bid to secure her release.
“Look, obviously it’s the Iranian authorities that have imprisoned Nazanin and the Iranian authorities have a practice of hostage diplomacy,” he said.
“But at the same time ... the Foreign Secretary’s words then were important and promises have consequences.Perhaps the bigger problem he did was when essentially, the press were briefed that that money was going to be paid and expectations were raised and he said ‘no stone would be unturned’.
“And then that didn’t happen, obviously we remain imprisoned, others have been taken since and you know, we’ve gone from ‘no stone unturned’ to ‘not my fault’.”
Zaghari-Ratcliffe was jailed in 2016 after being convicted of spying, which she denies. The couple have a daughter Gabriella, five, who has not been allowed to leave Iran following her mother’s arrest and is living in the country with her maternal grandparents.
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