Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who lives in West Hampstead with husband Richard Ratcliffe and daughter Gabriella, spent four years in Tehran’s Evin prison and a further two under house arrest after being falsely accused of spying.
On June 13, Israel launched surprise attacks on key Iranian military and nuclear facilities and 10 days later hit Evin, where Nazanin had been incarcerated.
Many of those imprisoned there opposed the Iranian regime, and in an article in the Guardian, she wrote of her fellow prisoners: “Nobody seems to know what has happened to them.”
Describing her reaction when she saw news of the attack, she said: “My hands froze and I felt a shiver down my neck, just as when bad news landed back when I was held.
“After a couple of minutes I contacted my former Evin cellmates who are now outside to check if they knew anything. They were as horrified and scared as I was.”
She said attempts to get in touch with families of prisoners was “impossible” and claimed the Government does not know how many British citizens are held in Evin or where they have been moved.
She said watching the prison doors being blown off “felt surreal”, as she had walked in and out of that gate so many times as she was taken to court or hospital.
She added: “The Iranian people have suffered decades of crimes by the Islamic Republic, which has violated their basic human rights, incarcerated thousands of people and executed many for standing up for themselves. Many of those are in Evin,” she said.
The US bombed three sites in Iran with a wave of cruise missiles and bunker-buster bombs on Sunday, prompting missiles to be fired at a US base in Qatar on Monday. There has since been a cease fire.
Describing Israeli bombing as “unlawful”, she said: “The mission creep has been unnerving, even for those of us who have suffered at the hands of the Iranian regime. The silence of the international community, including the UK, on this point has been worrying.”
She said when she returned to the UK, then-opposition Labour leader Keir Starmer was one of the first to greet her and promised that his government would stand up for human rights in Iran.
But she said there is now a “dangerous reluctance” from Starmer’s ministers to criticise the illegality of allies joining in Israel’s war on Iran.
She said: “If Evin taught me anything, it was that freedom does not come from bombs and brutality, nor from clever stunts for the cameras. It lies in human connection and empathy.
“People in Iran, people across the Middle East – in prison and outside – could do with a bit more of that now.”
