I represent Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s family – this is how we can bring her home

Richard Ratcliffe is on hunger strike again as his wife remains a hostage in Iran. The government is squandering Nazanin’s diplomatic protection

Today marks the 18th day of Richard Ratcliffe’s hunger strike. He is camping outside the UK Foreign Office because his wife and the mother of his child, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, has been held hostage in Iran for five and a half years.

By this point, his body is expected to be feeding on itself and unable to regulate his temperature, his metabolism slowed, kidney function impaired, and immune system weakened. He is supported around the clock by friends and family who monitor his state. They are particularly worried about hypothermia.

This is Richard’s second hunger strike since Nazanin was detained, but this time it is marked by temperatures dropping to almost freezing at night. It is bitterly cold on the hard concrete, and the usual charms of camping are lost under the streetlights and the sounds of traffic.

Meanwhile, an Iranian delegation, invited to the UK for the United Nations climate conference Cop26, mingles with world leaders in Glasgow.

Three thousand miles away, Nazanin is trapped in Iran, yearning to raise her daughter Gabriella, and bearing the risk that she will be returned to jail at any moment for fictitious charges designed to hold her hostage.

Nazanin was arrested while visiting family in Iran in April 2016. She has since faced two prosecutions for spurious charges related to national security and spreading propaganda. Nazanin and her family have been told by Iranian officials that she is detained due to the UK’s failure to pay an outstanding £400 million military debt, which the UK acknowledges it legitimately owes to Iran. Nazanin’s suffering in Iran is so severe that it amounts to torture.

A few days into Richard’s hunger strike, the new UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss bowed to public pressure and invited Richard and his legal team to meet to discuss Nazanin’s case. Richard was told that the government is doing everything it can, and that it continues to raise Nazanin’s case with their Iranian counterparts. He has been told this countless times over the years.

After five-and-a-half years, it is abundantly clear that the current approach is not working.

One would expect that when an innocent British citizen has been tortured over the UK’s diplomatic dispute with another state, the government would be held to account for their actions or failures. Instead, the government maintains that it has no legal obligations but provides consular assistance only at its discretion.

Richard and his legal team have spent years making suggestions to the Foreign Secretary’s four predecessors as to what the government should do to bring Nazanin home and hold Iran accountable for its systematic hostage-taking. These suggestions have largely gone unheeded. During the meeting with the foreign secretary, they reiterated several next steps the government should take.

The government must stop squandering diplomatic protection, which it granted Nazanin in 2019, and take more assertive action to secure her release. It must hold Iran accountable to its obligations under international law, including the requirement to investigate and prosecute torture. It should additionally escalate the matter to the United Nations, such as pursuing a commission of inquiry into Iran’s torture of foreign nationals.

The government must also pay the £400 million military debt it owes to Iran, for which Nazanin and other British nationals have been told they are detained. It must freeze the assets of, and impose travel bans on, individual perpetrators of Iran’s hostage-taking through the use of targeted human rights sanctions. Finally, the government should recognise Nazanin and other innocent British citizens detained for diplomatic leverage over Iran as “hostages”.

The one thing the government must not do is the only thing it offers – maintain the status quo.

The fundamental role of governments is to protect their people. The government’s inaction over Nazanin’s case diminishes what it means to have a British passport. To fail Nazanin, Richard, and Gabriella is to fail us all.

Leanna Burnard is a legal officer at Redress, the legal representative for Richard and Nazanin since 2016