Shocking new evidence of how Boris Johnson blundered when he was foreign secretary over the case of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe can be revealed – after the 43-year-old former charity worker was reunited with her family following a harrowing six-year detention in Iran.
The emotional reunion early on Thursday with her husband, Richard, and seven-year-old daughter Gabriella came after Britain agreed to pay a debt of £393.8m to Iran relating to an order for Chieftain tanks.
Johnson described Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s return, alongside that of retired British-Iranian civil engineer Anoosheh Ashoori, as the result of a “great deal of UK diplomacy”.
But writing in the Observer, the family’s MP, Tulip Siddiq, reveals new evidence of the shortcomings and at times seemingly callous behaviour of Foreign Office officials and ministers – and the way Johnson failed to grasp even basic details of the case in 2017 – as Richard Ratcliffe sought to highlight his wife’s plight.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe was arrested in Iran during a visit without her husband to see her parents in 2016. She was convicted of plotting to overthrow the country’s clerical regime, claims she has always denied.
As foreign secretary, Johnson mistakenly told the foreign affairs select committee that Zaghari-Ratcliffe had been “simply teaching people journalism” – remarks that were seized on in Iran as evidence of her “crimes”.
But Siddiq also reveals in her article her shock when Johnson betrayed his ignorance of the case again when he met her with Richard Ratcliffe to discuss his previous error before the committee.
“This disastrous blunder meant Johnson was forced to meet us. Again, I raised my concerns about the debt, which were flatly denied by him,” she writes. “Incredibly, he asked if Richard had enjoyed his visit to Iran. Anyone who had read a newspaper article on the case was aware that Richard had been at home in the UK when his wife was arrested in Iran. To this day, I feel astonished by Johnson’s extremely poor grasp of his brief.”
The MP writes about how successive prime ministers denied there was any link between the UK’s debt to Iran and Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s release, despite the fact that her captors told her there was. It was only last year, after Liz Truss became foreign secretary, that the link was acknowledged, and debt accepted as “legitimate”.
Despite widespread elation at the releases, there are growing calls from MPs for a full investigation into the government’s handling of the case, and signs of wider dysfunction in the Foreign Office on matters including the evacuation from Afghanistan.
On Monday Philip Barton, permanent under-secretary at the Foreign Office, and Nigel Casey, the special representative on Afghanistan and Pakistan, are to be questioned by MPs on the select committee after suggestions that previous evidence given on Afghanistan was incorrect. Sources say the hearing could be explosive.
Several members of the committee want the Zaghari-Ratcliffe case to be investigated, including Johnson’s role and the issue around the debt payment.
Former cabinet minister Liam Byrne, who is on the committee, said: “It’s now vital we get to the bottom of why Nazanin’s family was forced to resort to a hunger strike to push for the Foreign Office to step up the work to secure her release.
“The last thing families should be forced to do at such an acutely distressing time is organise public campaigns to push ministers to act. With the Foreign Office facing big questions from its flawed evacuation efforts in Afghanistan to our lagging effort on sanctions, this latest crisis confirms we need to ask some fundamental questions as to whether the department has its house in order.”
Another Labour MP, Chris Bryant, said that despite everyone’s delight at the releases, “we cannot possibly get into a situation where arbitrary detention of dual nationals is rewarded. We will need to do a broad inquiry into the Foreign Office’s handling of this.”
A government spokesperson said the prime minister was delighted that Ashoori and Zaghari-Ratcliffe had been reunited with their families. “The Iranian government was responsible for Nazanin’s unfair detention and the decision was always in their gift. However, the prime minister has previously apologised for his comments.”
The Home Office is also facing calls to explain why it deported an official Iranian delegation in a move that insiders believe played a role in the problems securing the release of Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori.
A small Iranian diplomatic delegation landed at Heathrow in 2013 to discuss a historic £400m debt Britain owed. However, upon arriving, their visas were dismissed, they were held in a detention centre and finally deported. Former prime minister, Theresa May, was home secretary at the time. The current defence secretary, Ben Wallace, was among the MPs to criticise the incident.
Jack Straw, the former foreign secretary, said their treatment helped fuel the distrust that repeatedly hampered attempts to secure the release of British nationals held in Iran. He called for an explanation. “Their visas were given in the full knowledge of why they were coming here,” he said. “After that experience, the revolutionary guards thought, we need to take more direct action.
“This is either a total mistake by the Home Office and the border people or it could have been something more deliberate. I absolutely think that this is something that the home affairs committee ought to look at. Whatever the intention, it had the effect of completely disrupting our negotiations and adding to their instinctive distrust of us.”
• This article was amended on 20 March 2022. Tulip Siddiq wrote that the UK’s debt to Iran was accepted as “legitimate” under Liz Truss, not the link between the debt and Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s release as stated in an earlier version, although that was acknowledged under Truss. This has been clarified.
