Britain on Wednesday confirmed the release by Iran of British-Iranian dual nationals Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anousheh Ashouri, saying they would return to Britain later on Wednesday.
"I am very pleased to confirm that the unfair detention of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anousheh Ashouri in Iran has ended today, and they will now return to the UK," Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Twitter.
A third dual-national Morad Tahbaz was released from prison in Iran on furlough, foreign minister Liz Truss said on Twitter.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Ashouri arrived in Oman’s capital Muscat on board a Royal Air Force of Oman flight Wednesday afternoon, Omani state media reported.
A British lawmaker in contact with Zaghari-Ratcliffe and her family tweeted a picture of her smiling and said it showed her on board a plane.
"Nazanin is now in the air flying away from 6 years of hell in Iran," the lawmaker, Tulip Siddiq said on Twitter after the plane took off.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a project manager with the Thomson Reuters Foundation, was arrested at a Tehran airport in April 2016 and later convicted by an Iranian court of plotting to overthrow the clerical establishment.
Her family and the foundation deny the charge.
Ashouri was sentenced to 10 years in jail in 2019 for spying for Israel's Mossad and two years for "acquiring illegitimate wealth", according to Iran's judiciary.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe's husband, Richard Ratcliffe, said his wife had clearly been held "hostage" as part of a political game over an old debt owed by the UK dating back to the time of the Shah of Iran.
The government never officially linked her detention with what it owed but soon after her release was announced, the UK said it had settled the outstanding £400 million bill.
Iran's foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, said on Wednesday that Iran had received the money “a few days ago”, adding that it was “wrong to link Iran receiving its debt... to the release of these people”.
The historic debt was related to the sale of battle tanks to Iran's former ruler, the Shah, before the country's Islamic Revolution in 1979.
(FRANCE 24 with REUTERS)
