The government imposed “significant suffering” on the British-Iranian dual nationals Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori by spurning early opportunities to secure their freedom, a scathing report by the foreign affairs select committee has found.
The report into Foreign Office handling of hostage diplomacy says it is highly regrettable that such opportunities were missed, when evidence from former ministers showed the terms of their release were no different when they were freed in 2022 to those on offer in 2017.
The committee found the chances were rejected either due to fear of irritating the US, or UK legal advice that was later cast aside by ministers in 2022.
The MPs describe the overall Foreign Office treatment of British nationals held hostage by states and of their families as hurtful and ineffectual, marked by poor coordination, ministerial churn, excessive secrecy and a reluctance to make their plight central to British diplomacy. They say unless it improves it may be necessary to impose a legal duty on the Foreign Office to provide consular support.
The committee rejects a Foreign Office presumption that “quiet diplomacy” and family silence is always appropriate throughout cases of state detentions and state hostage. The MPs instead say silence, except perhaps in the initial phase, “abets state hostage taking”.
“We heard from a number of families in private that there was a significant trust deficit between them and the government, primarily brought about through poor communication and lack of transparency on the part of the government,” the report says.
“Families are frequently assured by officials and ministers that they are ‘doing all they can’ to secure the release of their detained family members. This is an inadequate response. To communicate standard diplomatic representations as substantive actions to families of detainees with little or no further detail is not conducive to a constructive and supportive working partnership.”
The committee also found evidence that in reality ministers took up issues due to publicity surrounding cases.
The report directly criticises two former foreign secretaries, Liz Truss and Boris Johnson, saying they “let down” families by making inaccurate or counterproductive statements to the Commons that made the plight of two hostages more difficult to resolve.
Another former foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, is also criticised for announcing in March 2019 that Zaghari-Ratcliffe was being given diplomatic protection and then not following through on the announcement.
It says the policy “was ill thought-through and poorly implemented. It is likely that this was due to officials’ discomfort with this approach and a failure to implement it fully. This episode serves to illustrate an inconsistent and, at times, clumsy approach by the government.”
The committee found Hunt was at least candid enough to accept that the UK refusal to repay a £400m outstanding debt to Iran, confirmed by international arbitration, was an insuperable barrier to the release of British-Iranian detainees. Evidence given to the committee shows the Middle East minister Alistair Burt had been lobbying for the repayment of the debt as early as 2017, insisting the payment could not be considered a ransom.
The MPs found the handling of the complex cases going back many years, and not just confined to Iran, had been so poor that the government should appoint an equivalent to the US special envoy for hostage-taking within a year. The high-calibre dedicated appointee would have a direct line to the prime minister and have access to “creative solutions unconstrained by Britain’s other bilateral objectives”.
The Foreign Office is likely to resist the key committee proposal for a director for arbitrary and complex detentions, appointed on a five-year term, if the post has the potential to loosen the control of the entirety of the UK’s bilateral relations with states.
The committee’s chair, Alicia Kearns, said detainees’ families had described “ministerial clumsiness, serious and avoidable errors and even callous and hurtful comments to families”.
The Foreign Office’s refusal to describe state detention of dual nationals as state hostage-taking may be understandable legally, but the refusal “to accept the reality of the nature of a detention with the family of the detainee is unnecessary and hurtful”, the MPs say.
In other criticisms, the report found the Foreign Office had no agreed terminology over state hostage-taking, did not coordinate with other countries in cases of state hostage-taking and that UN reports on arbitrary detention showing a British national was being illegally detained made little or no tangible difference to how the UK approached a case.
A Foreign Office spokesperson said: “Consular officials are available 24/7 for families to receive tailored support. The foreign secretary and [Foreign Office] ministers are fully engaged in complex cases and have raised concerns with foreign governments.”
British hostage cases
Terry Waite, the archbishop of Canterbury’s special envoy, was held captive between 1987 and 1991 in Lebanon by a group linked to Hezbollah.
Brian Keenan, a lecturer from Belfast, was held captive by Islamic Dawn from 1986 until 1990. After his release became a recluse for three years, writing a moving memoir An Evil Cradling.
The journalist John McCarthy was held hostage between 1986 and 1991 in Lebanon. He shared a cell with Keenan, now a lifelong friend. His girlfriend at the time, Jill Morrell, campaigned for his release.
The aid worker David Haines was abducted by Islamic State in Syria in 2013 and killed in 2014.
Linda Norgrove, a UK aid worker captured in Afghanistan in 2010 by the Taliban, was the subject of a potential prisoner swap and was killed during a US rescue attempt.
Two British-Iranians, Morad Tahbaz (who also holds American citizenship) and Mehran Raoof, are still in jail in Tehran. Alireza Akbari, a British-Iranian dual national, was executed in January this year.
