{"id":1366,"date":"2018-12-25T16:28:23","date_gmt":"2018-12-25T16:28:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/?p=1366"},"modified":"2018-12-26T16:32:57","modified_gmt":"2018-12-26T16:32:57","slug":"abbas-edalat-british-professor-returns-to-uk-after-detention-in-iran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/?p=1366","title":{"rendered":"Abbas Edalat: British professor returns to UK after detention in Iran"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>A British-Iranian academic who was arrested and detained in Iran on security charges has returned to the UK, the Foreign Office has confirmed.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/iransos.com\/en\/photo\/2011\/a\/abbas-edalat.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"color: #808080;\">25 December 2018 \u2013BBC-<\/span> Prof Abbas Edalat, who works at Imperial College London, was detained in Tehran in April.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">The Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran said he was released last week.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">British-Iranian charity worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe remains in prison in Iran, where she has been since 2016.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><!--more--><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Prof Edalat &#8211; who\u00a0<strong>specialises in computer science and mathematics<\/strong>\u00a0&#8211; was reportedly attending an academic workshop in Iran on 15 April when he was detained.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">At the time of his arrest, an Iranian news agency reported that Prof Edalat was part of a &#8220;network&#8221; of British spies whose members had been identified and arrested.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Prof Edalat founded\u00a0<strong>anti-war protest group CASMII<\/strong>, which opposes sanctions in Iran.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">The group said: &#8220;It increasingly appears, as we had suspected, that his detention in spring in Iran was a case of misinformation and misunderstanding by the Iranian security apparatus.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">In April, there were at least 30 dual nationals in jail in Iran &#8211; among them several dual British-Iranian nationals.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">consular cases in Iran in line with what we believe will produce the best outcomes in their cases.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe is serving a five-year jail sentence after being convicted of spying charges, which she denies.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt met Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe&#8217;s husband, Richard Ratcliffe, on 21 December to assure him the Foreign Office was continuing to work towards her release.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">With regards to her case, a Foreign Office spokesman said: &#8220;We have repeatedly lobbied the Iranians to release Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe on humanitarian grounds and we raise all our cases at every level and every opportunity.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">The spokesman added that Iran did not recognise dual nationality, which made the case more difficult.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><strong>Pri<\/strong><strong>me Minister Theresa May met Iranian President Hassan Rouhani for talks<\/strong>at the United Nations in New York in September, when she told him she had &#8220;serious concerns&#8221; about Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe&#8217;s imprisonment.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A British-Iranian academic who was arrested and detained in Iran on security charges has returned to the UK, the Foreign Office has confirmed. 25 December 2018 \u2013BBC- Prof Abbas Edalat,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[61],"tags":[397,263],"class_list":["post-1366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-abbas-edalat","tag-nazanin-zaghari-ratcliffe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1366"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1366\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1367,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1366\/revisions\/1367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}