British aid worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe told Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Friday that she has been "living in the shadow of his words" when the pair met for the first time since she was released after being detained in Iran for six years.
Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe was freed in March with fellow detainee Anoosheh Ashoori after the UK agreed to settle a historic £400 million ($486.9 million) debt dating from the late 1970s.
She attended Downing Street with her family on Friday to ask Mr Johnson, who was foreign secretary between 2016 and 2018, why it took so long to negotiate her release.
Following the meeting, her husband Richard told Sky News she had put it to Mr Johnson that she had been forced to "live in the shadow of his words" during years in jail.
The meeting was the first time the two have come face to face since Mr Johnson, who was foreign secretary at the time, wrongly claimed in 2017 that Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe had been training journalists at the time of her arrest in 2016.
Four days later, she was summoned before an unscheduled court hearing, where his comments were cited as proof that she was engaged in “propaganda against the regime”.
After facing a sustained backlash over the remarks, Mr Johnson has previously said he was sorry “if [he had] inadvertently caused any further anguish”.
Mr Ratcliffe revealed after the meeting that Mr Johnson had not apologised to his wife.
Prior to the meeting Mr Johnson's spokesman had said it was the Iranian government who were responsible for her "unfair" detention.
“I think it is important to remember that it was the Iranian government who were responsible for her unfair detention, and the decision to release her was always in their gift," he said.
“However, I would point back to the prime minister’s words, his answers to questions on this before and he has previously apologised for his comments in 2017.”
In March Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe had criticised the government, asking: "How many foreign secretaries does it take for someone to come home? Five?"
A spokesman for the prime minister said the engagement was “something we’ve worked together on to make happen”.
“We’ve said previously that the prime minister was open to meeting Nazanin as well as Mr Anoosheh Ashoori," he said.
“It is something we have been trying to arrange. I’ve set out that he is going to welcome her to Downing Street to discuss her ordeal in Iran.”
Politician Tulip Siddiq, who campaigned for her release, said that she "deserves to hear directly from the prime minister about why it took so long to get her home". Ms Siddiq also attended the meeting.
Ms Siddiq said she was also going to raise the case of Morad Tahbaz, an Iranian-American environmentalist who also holds British citizenship who is still detained in Iran.
"Never again must the government allow British citizens to be taken hostage with so little done to secure their release and so few reprisals for those responsible," Ms Siddiq said.
“After six long years of unjust and unlawful imprisonment in Iran, Nazanin deserves to hear directly from the prime minister about why it took so long to get her home.
“I will also be submitting evidence to the Foreign Affairs Committee’s inquiry on hostage taking, which I hope will get the bottom of the government’s abject failure in handling cases like Nazanin’s.”
Last month the UK said it would be holding an inquiry into the detention and release from Iran of Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Mr Ashoori.
The Commons Foreign Committee said it would take evidence on how their cases were handled by British officials as part of a wider investigation into “state level hostage situations”.
Since their return both have been critical of the failure of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office to secure their freedom sooner.
Announcing the inquiry, committee chairman Tom Tugendhat said their return was “long overdue” and that they were right to seek answers as to what happened.
On Friday, EU envoy Enrique Mora said he has called for the release on "humanitarian grounds" of an Iranian-Swedish academic on death row, during a mission to Tehran to help revive Iran's 2015 nuclear pact.
Mr Mora, the European Union's co-ordinator for talks between Iran and major world powers to restore the deal, met Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Ali Bagheri, who is also deputy foreign minister, on Wednesday and Thursday.
Mr Mora tweeted after his departure that he had raised the case of the academic, Ahmedreza Djalali.
"I want to underline that in Tehran I raised the need to stop execution of #AhmadrezaDjalali and asked for his release on humanitarian grounds," the EU deputy foreign policy chief wrote.
Mr Djalali, who was based in Stockholm and worked at Karolinska Medical Institute, was arrested during a visit to Iran in April 2016.
He was sentenced to death in 2017 after being found guilty of passing information about two Iranian nuclear scientists to Israel's Mossad spy agency that had led to their assassinations.
Early this month, Iran's Isna news agency reported that the death sentence would be carried out by May 21.
The announcement coincided with the end of the trial in Sweden of Hamid Noury, a former official in Iran's judiciary, accused of war crimes for his role in the killing of prisoners in Iran during the 1980s.
Prosecutors have requested life imprisonment for Noury, and he will be sentenced in July.
What the law says
Micro-retirement is not a recognised concept or employment status under Federal Decree Law No. 33 of 2021 on the Regulation of Labour Relations (as amended) (UAE Labour Law). As such, it reflects a voluntary work-life balance practice, rather than a recognised legal employment category, according to Dilini Loku, senior associate for law firm Gateley Middle East.
“Some companies may offer formal sabbatical policies or career break programmes; however, beyond such arrangements, there is no automatic right or statutory entitlement to extended breaks,” she explains.
“Any leave taken beyond statutory entitlements, such as annual leave, is typically regarded as unpaid leave in accordance with Article 33 of the UAE Labour Law. While employees may legally take unpaid leave, such requests are subject to the employer’s discretion and require approval.”
If an employee resigns to pursue micro-retirement, the employment contract is terminated, and the employer is under no legal obligation to rehire the employee in the future unless specific contractual agreements are in place (such as return-to-work arrangements), which are generally uncommon, Ms Loku adds.
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Labour dispute
The insured employee may still file an ILOE claim even if a labour dispute is ongoing post termination, but the insurer may suspend or reject payment, until the courts resolve the dispute, especially if the reason for termination is contested. The outcome of the labour court proceedings can directly affect eligibility.
- Abdullah Ishnaneh, Partner, BSA Law
Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
The biog
Family: wife, four children, 11 grandchildren, 16 great-grandchildren
Reads: Newspapers, historical, religious books and biographies
Education: High school in Thatta, a city now in Pakistan
Regrets: Not completing college in Karachi when universities were shut down following protests by freedom fighters for the British to quit India
Happiness: Work on creative ideas, you will also need ideals to make people happy
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Why it pays to compare
A comparison of sending Dh20,000 from the UAE using two different routes at the same time - the first direct from a UAE bank to a bank in Germany, and the second from the same UAE bank via an online platform to Germany - found key differences in cost and speed. The transfers were both initiated on January 30.
Route 1: bank transfer
The UAE bank charged Dh152.25 for the Dh20,000 transfer. On top of that, their exchange rate margin added a difference of around Dh415, compared with the mid-market rate.
Total cost: Dh567.25 - around 2.9 per cent of the total amount
Total received: €4,670.30
Route 2: online platform
The UAE bank’s charge for sending Dh20,000 to a UK dirham-denominated account was Dh2.10. The exchange rate margin cost was Dh60, plus a Dh12 fee.
Total cost: Dh74.10, around 0.4 per cent of the transaction
Total received: €4,756
The UAE bank transfer was far quicker – around two to three working days, while the online platform took around four to five days, but was considerably cheaper. In the online platform transfer, the funds were also exposed to currency risk during the period it took for them to arrive.
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
OPINIONS ON PALESTINE & ISRAEL
