{"id":1470,"date":"2019-06-19T16:35:40","date_gmt":"2019-06-19T16:35:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/?p=1470"},"modified":"2019-06-19T16:35:40","modified_gmt":"2019-06-19T16:35:40","slug":"richard-ratcliffe-takes-hunger-strike-for-wifes-freedom-to-irans-doorstep-in-london","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/?p=1470","title":{"rendered":"Richard Ratcliffe Takes Hunger Strike for Wife\u2019s Freedom to Iran\u2019s Doorstep in London"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

Dual National Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe Has Been Eligible for Release Since 2017<\/strong><\/p><\/div>\n

June 18, 2019 \u2013 On day four of Richard Ratcliffe\u2019s hunger strike outside the Iranian embassy in London, embassy staff noisily repositioned the\u00a0metal barriers\u00a0they\u2019d put up behind him and started\u00a0sanding the building\u00a0to suppress coverage of his campaign for his imprisoned wife\u2019s freedom.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cPutting up metal walls can block the embassy\u2019s view of Richard, but those walls won\u2019t stop the rest of the world from seeing the injustice that\u2019s being done to him, his wife and their entire family,\u201d said Hadi Ghaemi, executive director of the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI).<\/p>\n

On June 15, Ratcliffe began a joint wet hunger strike with his wife,\u00a0Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, to urge the Iranian judiciary to free her from Tehran\u2019s Evin Prison where she has been held on trumped-up espionage charges since April 2016.<\/p>\n

CHRI urges the Iranian government to address the\u00a0Free Nazanin Campaign\u2019s\u00a0demands:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Immediately Release Zaghari-Ratcliffe<\/li>\n
  2. Immediately allow her to be visited by British embassy staff in Tehran so they can check her health status (something she has been denied for the past three years)<\/li>\n
  3. If Zaghari-Ratcliffe is not released in the next few weeks, allow Ratcliffe to visit her in Iran.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
    \"\"

    Richard Ratcliffe has been camped outside the Iranian embassy in London on hunger strike for the freedom of his wife, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe from Tehran\u2019s Evin Prison, since June 15, 2019. <\/strong><\/p><\/div>\n

    \u201cThe Iranian government\u2019s treatment of Nazanin, Richard, and their young child is cruel and inhumane,\u201d said Ghaemi. \u201cIt\u2019s time for them to end this injustice.\u201d<\/p>\n

    While visiting her parents in Tehran with her then\u00a022-month-old daughter\u00a0in April 2016, Zaghari-Ratcliffe was arrested by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps\u2019 intelligence organization and sentenced to five years in prison under unspecified espionage charges.<\/p>\n

    An employee of the Thomson Reuters Foundation charity, Zaghari-Ratcliffe has been\u00a0eligible for release\u00a0since November 2017 based on Article 58 of Iran\u2019s\u00a0Islamic Penal Code,\u00a0which states that courts can issue an order of conditional release after a convict has served one-third of their sentence.<\/p>\n

    In July 2018, a judge\u00a0reportedly told\u00a0Zaghari-Ratcliffe that she was being held as a bargaining chip by the Iranian government to convince London to pay Tehran an old debt.<\/p>\n

    \u201cThe Rouhani government has stood by for the past three years while the Revolutionary Guards and judiciary have torn this family apart,\u201d said Ghaemi.<\/p>\n

    \u201cZaghari-Ratcliffe is in prison for political reasons that have nothing to do with her,\u201d he added. \u201cHer freedom is long past due.\u201d<\/p>\n

    At least 11 dual and foreign nationals or Iranian citizens with foreign residences were known to be\u00a0imprisoned in Iran\u00a0as of June 2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    June 18, 2019 \u2013 On day four of Richard Ratcliffe\u2019s hunger strike outside the Iranian embassy in London, embassy staff noisily repositioned the\u00a0metal barriers\u00a0they\u2019d put up behind him and started\u00a0sanding<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[263,485],"class_list":["post-1470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-human-rights","tag-nazanin-zaghari-ratcliffe","tag-richard-ratcliffe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1470","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=1470"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1470\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1471,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1470\/revisions\/1471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}