Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe could lose her chance of having a second child unless she is released from an Iranian jail, her husband has warned.
Richard Ratcliffe said the charity worker who spent her 40th birthday in prison on Boxing Day dreads missing out on the possibility of having another child.
Explaining how the landmark birthday had loomed large, he told the HuffPost UK: “Partly for the landmark of not wanting to turn 40 alone in a prison cell, still denied watching her baby grow up, but increasingly wondering whether they will keep her so long that she is also denied having a second child”.
His comments came after Jeremy Hunt, the Foreign Secretary, said she was the victim of a “great injustice” and he hoped it would be the last birthday she has to spend in custody.
The British-Iranian mother was arrested at Tehran’s Imam Khomeini airport in April 2016.
Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe, of Hampstead in north London, was sentenced to five years in jail after being accused of spying, a charge she vehemently denies.
Mr Hunt wrote on Twitter: “Happy 40th birthday Nazanin! Thinking of you and your family this Boxing Day. If the thoughts and prayers of a whole nation can make a difference to you and other innocent people detained in Iran then this will be last birthday you will be suffering such a great injustice.”
The charity worker’s four-year-old daughter Gabriella has been staying with family in Iran since the detention of Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who works for the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Her husband Richard Ratcliffe has mounted a high-profile campaign for his wife’s release.
The month before, she had been granted a three-day release but her request for an extension was denied and she was forced to say goodbye to Gabriella and return to jail.
Amnesty International said Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s birthday was inevitably a “day of anguish”, and has called on the UK Government to use “every channel of communication available to it” in its efforts to secure her release.
Kate Allen, Amnesty International UK’s director, said: “Nazanin is a prisoner of conscience who should never have been jailed in the first place.”
Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s 40th birthday comes after a British-Iranian academic and anti-war activist who was detained in Iran returned to the UK.
Iran’s official IRNA news agency had reported that Prof Edalat was being held on “security charges”.
Source » telegraph