Panorama 2020 E33
Category
🦄
CreativityTranscript
00:00It's 2016 and Nazanin Zaghari Ratcliffe is travelling home after visiting her parents
00:11in Iran.
00:20But she's stopped from returning to London.
00:39Nazanin was jailed for five years on spying charges, widely denounced as baseless.
00:45We think she's being held hostage.
00:48This is the inside story of why it has taken so long to get her and other innocent British
00:54prisoners home.
01:11Richard Ratcliffe is bringing up his daughter alone.
01:16Because Gabriela's mum has been locked up in Iran.
01:22There was a gap of about five years between us getting married and Gabriela coming.
01:27And then when she came it was, gosh, why do we wait so long?
01:36Obviously we came from different backgrounds and different cultures, but really it felt
01:43like, you know, meeting her felt like coming home, a real connection.
01:48I haven't seen her since Gatwick Airport, 2016, March 17th, St. Patrick's Day.
01:59How long was Nazanin in solitary confinement for, all told?
02:03Yes, all told eight and a half months.
02:05She did six weeks, out for two weeks, then back in in seven more months.
02:23Gabriela was trapped in Iran too.
02:28But she was eventually allowed to see her mum in jail.
02:34And last October, the Iranians let her return to the UK to live with her dad.
02:39Nugget and chips will go down here.
02:41She came over quite daunted, if I'm honest.
02:45She'll say she misses mummy and ask when mummy's coming back, and you know, maybe is it tomorrow?
02:54Occasionally she asks, why is my mummy in prison?
02:59Which you know, there's no good answer to, like it's, yeah, it could have been someone
03:03else's mummy, it was just hers.
03:12Anna Diamond was also arrested while visiting her family in Iran.
03:18She was locked up in the same jail as Nazanin after being sentenced to 10 years for spying.
03:25She's a British-Iranian, and she'd been a member of the Young Conservatives.
03:29And that was used as evidence against her at her trial.
03:36You are led to a dead end where no matter what you respond, it's just not enough for
03:42them because they already had their mind set on the answer that they wanted to get out
03:47of you.
03:50Anna spent 200 days in solitary confinement in Evin prison.
03:56At one point, she thought she was going to be executed.
04:00The mock execution happened around dawn time, 4 or 5am, perhaps a bit earlier, but I just
04:08remember the air was very crisp and it was like a, kind of like I felt like a morning
04:13fog.
04:14I couldn't see anything, my hands and my feet were cuffed and I was taken into a car.
04:19You thought you were going to get shot?
04:20Well naturally, that's what I thought.
04:21And I just remember I was on my knees and just like praying and crying and suddenly
04:29the officer just said, oh get up, like it's not happening today.
04:39Her interrogators made up lurid allegations about her.
04:46Anna says she eventually submitted to a virginity test to prove her innocence.
04:54They would accuse me of sleeping with multiple people just to get information from them.
04:59I was a virgin, so I said, well, if, you know, they suggested a virginity test to scare me
05:06and I said, actually, I will do it if it will make you realise that I haven't done any of
05:12these things.
05:18Iran maintains its justice system is lawful and humane.
05:26Anna can still sketch the prison layout from memory.
05:31And what happened there is never far from her mind.
05:36Why do you make someone who has just turned 20, a young girl who like has no involvement
05:46in anything, why would you make her go through that?
05:48It is torture and I hate it when people say that psychological torture, it's not as bad
05:55as physical torture because it is, it is so destructive.
06:00Like I still live with those memories and that's not easy.
06:05It's far from anything that any normal person should go through.
06:15To understand why Anna and Nazanin were imprisoned, you have to go back in time.
06:26Britain had helped the Shah of Iran to seize absolute power.
06:30He's a complex, highly intelligent man with the experience of 37 years as supreme ruler.
06:38But in 1979, the Shah was overthrown by the Islamic revolution.
06:43The rising was the outcome of years of bitterness and anger.
06:51Relations between the two countries have been hostile ever since.
06:55This is the man they call the father of the revolution, the first hesitant steps of Ayatollah
07:04Khomeini on Iranian soil.
07:06Ayatollah Khomeini, Ayatollah Khomeini, Ayatollah Khomeini, Ayatollah Khomeini, Ayatollah Khomeini.
07:23In recent years, the imprisonment of eight British-Iranian dual nationals has been made
07:29public but we think there's more.
07:36We've been told that there are other British-Iranian dual nationals being held at Evin prison right
07:42now.
07:43But the public know nothing about them.
07:50The UK government refuses to say how many British people are in Iranian jails and it
07:57routinely tells the families of those detained not to speak out.
08:05Their advice is always not to go public.
08:08That is the line they usually take but I don't think that works.
08:11I mean, we tried that for two years, it didn't work.
08:14I actually think I should have gone public much sooner because I think the more people
08:19know about this, the better it is.
08:24Sherry's husband, Anousheh, was arrested while visiting his mother in 2017.
08:31Sherry hasn't seen him since.
08:34That's really bad.
08:35Her only contact is when he phones from Evin prison.
08:38OK, love you.
08:39OK, bye.
08:44Anousheh is 66 and he's serving a 10-year sentence for spying.
08:51In the first year, there was a massive sense of guilt in whatever I did.
08:58I mean, if I went to the cinema, I felt guilty.
09:02I thought, I'm sitting here watching a film while my husband is being interrogated, you
09:06know, thousands of miles away or basically living in suffering.
09:12You're overwhelmed by this amazing sense of guilt.
09:18Their lives are dispensable.
09:21We kind of expect from a dictatorship or an Iranian government to, you know, have brainwashed
09:27people to a point where the lives of these so-called spies are irrelevant.
09:32But that's why we've turned our hopes to the UK.
09:35But we couldn't feel more insignificant here either because we're not really British when
09:40it comes to receiving a helping hand.
09:44Every time we talk, I try to give him updates of anything positive that's happening and
09:50try and, you know, crack some jokes or just try and keep the mood positive, really.
09:56But there's also this sense of hopelessness.
10:04Every night when I go to bed, I sort of think to myself, well, what is it today I could
10:11have done that I didn't do?
10:14You know, did I make enough people aware of the petition for him?
10:20The Iranians know my husband's not a spy.
10:22They know Mr Ratcliffe wasn't in Iran to topple the government, you know.
10:26They know these are preposterous charges.
10:39The evidence suggests that the UK prisoners are being held hostage.
10:47And that the Iranians are simply looking for a ransom.
10:55I would absolutely believe that hostage-taking is a tool of Iranian diplomacy.
11:00And actually, it has become normalised as an acceptable thing to do.
11:06Our questions to Iran's foreign ministry were declined.
11:11Iran denies hostage-taking.
11:14And the British government has avoided using the word hostage.
11:18One of the disadvantages of escalating these difficult consular cases and having a very
11:27loud public campaign in this country is that that simply strengthens the hand of those
11:34who are using these cases for their own internal ends in Iran.
11:41So the Iranians are hostage-taking?
11:43Well, I'm not going to go as far as to say that.
11:52The government declined to be interviewed but says,
11:55We remain committed to securing the immediate and permanent release of all arbitrarily detained
12:02dual British nationals in Iran and regularly lobby for their release at the highest levels.
12:09This includes through the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary and the British Ambassador
12:14in Tehran.
12:24There is another way to try to get the prisoners home.
12:28The American government takes a more direct approach.
12:32They first paid for the release of hostages shortly after the Islamic Revolution.
12:37OK, I just don't want them to certify something 12 million dollars short.
12:42It's just before dawn.
12:43Mr. Carter has been up all night.
12:45He's in the final hours of his presidency.
12:47The hostages are still held in Tehran.
12:52Fifty-two diplomats had been seized from the American embassy in Tehran.
12:58They were only freed after the American government agreed to release eight billion dollars of
13:03Iranian assets, which the US had seized.
13:08The US government has continued to negotiate the release of its citizens to this day.
13:28And unlike the British government, it's not afraid of using the H-word.
13:35Do you consider those Western citizens that are being held in Iran as hostages?
13:40Yes, the Americans that are held in Iran are wrongfully detained.
13:45And Iran has unfortunately a sad history going back to 1979 of hostage-taking, when they
13:51took our American diplomats hostage.
13:53And this is a practice, it's a tool of statecraft.
13:56It's part of Iran's foreign policy to take people hostage who are innocent and then trade
14:02them later for some objective that they think advances their own objectives.
14:15The Washington Post Tehran correspondent Jason Rezaian spent 544 days in Evin prison.
14:24He was accused of spying for the CIA.
14:28It was laughable.
14:29All of the supposed evidence was innuendo.
14:33You're the head of the CIA station and here is our proof.
14:37I'm thinking to myself, are these guys joking?
14:49His trial was a farce.
14:55Remember the Pharrell Williams happy song that was so popular in the spring and summer
15:00of 2014.
15:01People made viral videos.
15:10There was one produced in Iran.
15:12I was accused of being the ringleader of the happy video.
15:17I mean, just nonsensical stuff.
15:22Everything that you can imagine that was publicly available about me on the internet was used
15:27against me as proof that I was trying to foment a soft overthrow of the Islamic Republic of
15:36Iran.
15:37When you go on trial in the revolutionary court in Iran, there's not going to be any
15:42evidence, there's not going to be any witnesses.
15:47The Americans negotiated the release of Jason and five other hostages in 2016.
15:53They swapped prisoners and paid a $1.7 billion debt they owed Iran from a weapons deal in
16:00the 1970s.
16:07This flight carried the first $400 million to Tehran.
16:17But negotiating for prisoners is a high-risk approach.
16:23The thing is, deal-making with Iran over detainees or hostages is controversial.
16:29Critics say that however you dress it up, it amounts to agreeing to pay a ransom.
16:36And even if you hand over the cash, there's no guarantee all your people will get out.
16:45I went to Iran because I really believed that change is coming, openness is happening.
16:53Nizar Zarka wanted to help bring American tech companies to Iran.
16:58He thought he would be safe because he'd been invited by the government.
17:04That's a government minister there who invited you?
17:07Yeah, he's the vice president.
17:09But Nizar found the minister couldn't protect him once the security forces decided to arrest him.
17:16Where are you here then?
17:18I am somewhere.
17:19On my way to the airport, they took me.
17:21They put me in the car, they put my head down, they blindfolded me and they take me to a
17:27place I didn't know anywhere where I am going.
17:30After a while I knew it was Section 2A in Evin prison.
17:37Nizar spent almost four years in Evin prison.
17:41He was left behind when Jason Rezaian and the other Americans were released in 2016.
17:48This is what they do. It's a pure business. It's nothing more, nothing less.
17:52The day Jason was released, the exact minute Jason was released,
17:57I was sent to his space, to his room, to his space.
18:01It's like we are a product in a supermarket.
18:04A product is sold, another product is put in its place.
18:08That's exactly what they do.
18:14Nizar and another American were finally released last year.
18:19Nizar's lawyer helped negotiate the deals.
18:23Can you tell us how you got Nizar Zakharov? What can you tell us?
18:28I can't go on camera with that.
18:30Even off camera, we don't talk about that because frankly it would hurt.
18:34We want to get other people out.
18:37So we rarely if ever talk about in detail what we did or how we did it.
18:41But I can tell you that it was engaging at all levels,
18:45directly and indirectly with the Iranians,
18:48with third party interlocutors, public and private.
18:52You have to negotiate. You have to talk.
18:55There's no doubt about that.
18:57You have to deal with the people who are holding your client.
19:00So you have to go to the people and the people around the people
19:03who are in a position to help bring a resolution to your case.
19:08And that is what we focus on.
19:15But there's a sticking point when it comes to getting the British prisoners out.
19:20Once again, it involves a debt from a 1970s arms deal.
19:27The Shah was a perfect host to the armed salesmen.
19:30He spent between a quarter and a third of his oil revenues
19:33on building up the Iranian armed forces.
19:37The Shah of Iran bought some 1,500 tanks from Britain.
19:43And one of the biggest sellers of all, the Chieftain tank.
19:46The Shah bought so many of them, he had more tanks than the British army itself.
19:52But after the Islamic Revolution, the UK stopped the order and kept the cash.
19:59It's around £400 million in today's money.
20:05The British courts have accepted the UK's debt should be paid.
20:10Nazanin Zaghari-Ratliff has been told payment holds the key to her release.
20:17She was told by the judiciary, by the deputy prosecutor,
20:20she was told by the judge in charge of parole
20:23that we're not going to release you until the British government
20:25pays the money they owe Iran.
20:27So she's been told that explicitly by three different parts of the judicial system.
20:31Anousheh Shourie has been told the same thing.
20:36Someone came up to him and said,
20:38are you Anousheh Shourie? And he said, yes.
20:41And he said, I really think the fate of the dual nationals
20:45depend on the payment of this debt.
20:48And then he said goodbye, walked away, and my husband never saw him again.
20:56Publicly, both the UK and Iran insist the £400 million debt
21:01has nothing to do with the hostages.
21:04This matter is before the courts.
21:06However, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Tehran
21:09has itself specifically decoupled the repayment of this debt
21:14from its detention of dual nationals.
21:17Tehran says no, that the two are separate.
21:21And given that Tehran has said no, even if we were minded to do so,
21:25it would be very difficult for us to proceed on the basis of quid pro quo.
21:31But we think there have been secret talks about paying the debt off.
21:36The story starts with a mistake Boris Johnson made in 2017.
21:42He told Parliament that Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe
21:45had been training journalists in Iran.
21:48When you look at what Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was doing,
21:52she was simply teaching people journalism, as I understand it,
21:58at the very limit, she was...
22:03But it wasn't true.
22:05Nazanin was simply on holiday.
22:09In Iran, Boris Johnson's mistake was taken as proof she was a spy.
22:17Boris was clear in the meetings I had with him
22:19that he was going to try and get it sorted
22:21and he was going to do what he could to bring Nazanin out.
22:24And implicit in that, from your perspective,
22:26was that he's going to sort out the debt?
22:28When he said no stone unturned in public,
22:30I presumed that meant, I'm going to solve the debt.
22:38Within days of Boris Johnson's pledge,
22:41the Iranian ambassador to London published a message saying,
22:45the debt is scheduled to be paid to Iran by Britain in the next few days.
22:55And three weeks after that, Boris Johnson went to Iran himself.
23:02When I saw that he was travelling to Tehran, I thought to myself,
23:06I desperately hope that a deal for her release has been negotiated already,
23:12because if it hasn't, this is a fool's errand
23:15and it's going to prolong her imprisonment even longer.
23:18If he didn't have assurances that she was going to come home with him,
23:22he shouldn't have made that trip.
23:26We understand a deal was almost reached
23:29and we can reveal British officials were preparing for Nazanin to come home.
23:36The British embassy called us up and said,
23:38we think she might be coming out on the 28th of December.
23:41So the embassy were giving us a date to be ready for.
23:45We don't know why a deal didn't happen,
23:49but well-placed sources have told us that some in the Ministry of Defence
23:53have objected to the payment of Britain's debt.
23:57They don't want to give Iran cash
23:59that could be used to attack Britain or its allies.
24:04What was that like for you at that point?
24:06Because your hopes are being built up.
24:08At that stage, you're a year and a half without...
24:11Yeah, and being told, no, you just need to go quiet again.
24:14It's like, you can't... You can't do that.
24:18Yeah, like, I think it was...
24:20There's an irresponsibility in how the case was managed at that point
24:24that has had lasting scars.
24:27For you?
24:29For the whole family, yeah.
24:35The UK government refused to answer our questions
24:39about a deal involving the debt and Nazanin's release.
24:43They told us we don't recognise any linkage
24:46and it is unhelpful to suggest otherwise.
24:49These individuals must be released unconditionally.
25:02I miss being a couple.
25:04I miss being a couple. I miss...
25:07I miss very ordinary things.
25:09I miss taking walks with my husband, taking the dog out.
25:14I miss...
25:18..eating together, cooking breakfast, watching films.
25:23You know, the things you like to watch with your other half.
25:29Very, very ordinary things.
25:32Yeah, that's what I miss.
25:35Sherry's husband is getting desperate.
25:38Anousheh has asked her to broadcast his plea for help from inside jail.
26:05..whilst holding my wife's hand,
26:07who has been the closest friend to me for 40 years now.
26:12I am now appealing to the British people and the government
26:16to help me and my fellow British citizens,
26:19who are in the same predicament as I am,
26:22to repatriate and join our families in Britain.
26:27What have the foreign office officials said to you?
26:30They've said they're doing their best.
26:32They've said they're doing their best,
26:34but, honestly, I'm not really impressed by what is their best,
26:37because they've achieved nothing.
26:44Hello. How are you?
26:47Yeah, we've been making cakes.
26:49Conditions for Nazanin Zaghari-Ratliff
26:51finally improved this spring.
26:54Iran released thousands of prisoners temporarily
26:57because of the coronavirus,
26:59and she remains now under house arrest at her parents' home in Iran.
27:06This past weekend, it was Gabriela's birthday,
27:09which was her sixth birthday.
27:11That was kind of the landmark that we were all hoping for.
27:14And, in some ways, I found it probably the hardest birthday
27:18that we've been apart.
27:24The government says it continues to explore options
27:28to resolve Britain's £400 million debt to Iran.
27:31But shouldn't we simply be paying up?
27:35The reality is that the failure to solve this issue
27:39has resulted in Nazanin being taken hostage
27:41and resulted in other people being taken hostage.
27:43The government has an obligation to de-escalate relations with Iran,
27:46to stop more people being taken hostage.
27:51What would you say to Boris Johnson?
27:54What will your central message be?
27:56It is money they owe.
27:58They're not doing Iran a favour.
28:00They're paying a debt.
28:02If that will restore families, I will go on my knees,
28:05I will beg him to do it.
28:07Free Al-Hussein! Free Al-Hussein! Free Al-Hussein!
28:12The UK's diplomatic efforts to free the hostages haven't worked.
28:17Time, say the families, for a different approach.
28:22Time to make a deal.
28:24Free Al-Hussein! Free Al-Hussein!