Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe “is in urgent need of psychiatric support” and has been the victim of torture, a report prepared by psychiatrists has found after examining her mental health.
The detained British-Iranian dual-national’s healing “can be only provided in the UK in the presence of her family after reunification”, the report says.
The 77-page report, prepared for the campaign group Redress, comes ahead of the Iranian authorities deciding on Sunday whether Zaghari-Ratcliffe should face a second set of charges. Intensive backstage diplomacy is under way to prevent the charges being laid.
Redress urged the UK foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, to accept that she has been the victim of torture.
The report was prepared by two doctors after extensive virtual discussions with her in October and February.
(April 3, 2016) Arrest in Tehran
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is arrested at Imam Khomeini airport as she is trying to return to Britain after a holiday visiting family with her daughter, Gabriella.
(July 12, 2016) Release campaign begins
Her husband, Richard Radcliffe, delivers a letter to David Cameron in 10 Downing Street, demanding the government do more for her release.
(September 9, 2016) Sentenced
She is sentenced to five years in jail. Her husband says the exact charges are still being kept a secret.
(November 21, 2016) Hunger strike
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe's health deteriorates after she spends several days on hunger strike in protest at her imprisonment.
(April 24, 2017) Appeal fails
Iran’s supreme court upholds her conviction.
(November 1, 2017) Boris Johnson intervenes
Boris Johnson, then Foreign Secretary, tells a parliamentary select committee "When we look at what [she] was doing, she was simply teaching people journalism". Four days after his comments, Zaghari-Ratcliffe is returned to court, where his statement is cited in evidence against her. Her employers, the Thomson Reuters Foundation, deny that she has ever trained journalists, and her family maintain she was in Iran on holiday. Johnson is eventually forced to apologise for the "distress and anguish" his comments cause the family.
(November 12, 2017) Health concerns
Her husband reveals that Zaghari-Ratcliffe has fears for her health after lumps had been found in her breasts that required an ultrasound scan, and that she was now “on the verge of a nervous breakdown”.
(August 3, 2018) Hunt meets husband
New Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt meets with Richard Ratcliffe, and pledges "We will do everything we can to bring her home."
(August 23, 2018) Temporary release
She is granted a temporary three-day release from prison.
(January 14, 2019) Hunger strike
Zaghari-Ratcliffe is on hunger strike again, in protest at the withdrawal of her medical care.
(March 8, 2019) Diplomatic protection
The foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, takes the unusual step of granting her diplomatic protection – a move that raises her case from a consular matter to the level of a dispute between the two states.
(May 17, 2019) Travel warning
The UK upgrades its travel advice to British-Iranian dual nationals, for the first time advising against all travel to Iran. The advice also urges Iranian nationals living in the UK to exercise caution if they decide to travel to Iran.
(June 15, 2019) Hunger strike in London
Richard Ratcliffe joins his wife in a new hunger strike campaign. He fasts outside the Iranian embassy in London as she begins a third hunger strike protest in prison.
(June 29, 2019) Hunger strike ends
Zaghari-Ratcliffe ends her hunger strike by eating some breakfast. Her husband also ends his strike outside the embassy.
(July 17, 2019) Moved to mental health ward
According to her husband, Zaghari-Ratcliffe was moved from Evin prison to the mental ward of Imam Khomeini hospital, where Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have prevented relatives from contacting her.
(October 11, 2019) Daughter returns to London
Zaghari-Ratcliffe's five year old daughter Gabriella, who has lived with her grandparents in Tehran and regularly visited her mother in jail over the last three years, returns to London in order to start school.
(March 17, 2020) Temporary release
Amid the threat of the coronavirus pandemic, she is temporarily released from prison, but will be required to wear an ankle brace and not move more than 300 metres from her parents’ home.
(September 8, 2020) New charges
Iranian state media reports that she will appear in court to face new and unspecified charges. In the end, a weekend court appearance on a new charge of waging propaganda against the state that could leave her incarcerated for another 10 years is postponed without warning, leading Zaghari-Ratcliffe to say "People should not underestimate the level of stress. People tell me to calm down. You don’t understand what it is like. Nothing is calm."
(October 28, 2020) Return to prison threatened
Zaghari-Ratcliffe is told she is to stand trial on fresh charges and will be returning to prison after the hearing.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe spent nearly four years in two different prisons and spent nine months in solitary confinement, a regular feature of Iranian interrogation techniques in cases of what they describe as security prisoners.
The experts note that the psychological and physical conditions that she experienced while in prison have persisted while Zaghari-Ratcliffe has been living with her parents in Iran, “where the continuing uncertainty of her fate creates a sense of permanent threat leading to constant pain and suffering”.
The examination was conducted virtually by Prof Dr Michele Heisler and Dr Lilla Hardi, two members of the internationally recognised independent experts forensic group.
The report finds Zaghari-Ratcliffe is suffering from “serious post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), major depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder due to her mistreatment during detention, present house arrest, and continuing legal and judicial uncertainty. In addition, Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe experiences physical pain and impairment that developed over the course of her imprisonment, including neck, shoulder and arm pain and numbness, tooth pain, possible anaemia, and breast lumps, which have not been adequately evaluated or treated.”
The report also finds she needs “individual psychotherapy that will provide her with the opportunity to develop a trusting relationship with a therapist who has a specialty in the treatment of severe trauma”.
The emphasis on the torture of solitary confinement in the report comes as a group of 25 civil rights activists begin a lawsuit in Tehran claiming the practice of placing detainees in prolonged solitary confinement is routinely used in Iran to isolate and weaken detainees in order to extract false “confessions”.
They claim in the lawsuit, filed at the beginning of this month, that Iranian law does not recognise solitary confinement as a means of punishment. “There is no legal authority for solitary confinement and indeed Iran’s supreme administrative court ruled in 2004 that regulations allowing suspects to be held in solitary were unlawful,” the claim says.
They argue in the lawsuit that “at present, solitary confinement is routinely carried out by Iran’s security agencies – both the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps’ (IRGC) Intelligence Organization, which is under the authority of Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, and the intelligence ministry, which operates under the authority of President Hassan Rouhani”.
