Iran has released 2 British-Iranian nationals jailed for espionage activities against Iran, Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Ashouri were released on Wednesday.
Before her release, Britain paid $530 million (400 million pounds) to Iran, to settle a debt related to an unfulfilled military contract that dates back to before the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, before Tehran released Zaghari-Ratcliffe.
There is no further information on the Iranian national that has been released in the exchange.
Reports said earlier today that Iran has released two British-Iranian nationals jailed for involvement in espionage activities against the Islamic Republic, with the pair preparing to leave the country.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anousheh Ashouri are heading to a Tehran airport to leave the country, their lawyer Hojjat Kermani told Reuters on Wednesday.
Ashouri, who previously lived in Southeast London with his family, was detained in August 2017 and was sentenced to 10 years in prison for cooperating with Israel’s spy agency Mossad and two years for obtaining 33,000 euros in “illicit funds” nearly a year later.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe, 43, had been found guilty of plotting to orchestrate a soft overthrow of the Islamic Republic and has been in jail since 2016.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a project manager with the Thomson Reuters Foundation, was arrested in Tehran in April 2016 as she was returning to Britain.
While the British media have claimed that she was arrested after a family visit and not on any mission, former British Foreign Secretary and current Prime Minister Boris Johnson disclosed in remarks to a parliamentary committee that Zaghari-Ratcliffe was “simply teaching people journalism as I understand it” when she was arrested at Tehran airport.
Back in October 2017, the prosecutor general of Tehran stated that she was being held for running “a BBC Persian online journalism course which was aimed at recruiting and training people to spread propaganda against Iran”.
Britain has delayed the payment for many years citing problems faced because of foreign sanctions against Iran.
However, Tehran has insisted the debt should be settled regardless of issues that exist between Iran and the West.
The money is owed to Iran over an upfront payment made by the former Shah of Iran to Britain to buy 1,750 Chieftain tanks and other military vehicles.
Johnson on Tuesday declined to comment on Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s case and whether there have been direct talks on the debt issue in Tehran although he admitted that talks on consular cases have been going on for a long time.
Later in the day, British lawmaker Tulip Siddiq said Zaghari-Ratcliffe has had her British passport returned.
“I am very pleased to say that Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has been given her British passport back,” Siddiq said on Twitter.
