CEO responds to news of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s court appearance

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s five-year trauma should have come to an end last week. On Mother’s Day in the UK, she should have been reunited with her young daughter, whom she desperately misses. Instead, this latest trial and delayed outcome is a deliberate move to prolong her ordeal and her suffering.

All who know her are deeply concerned for her mental and physical health, both of which have been severely affected and which need urgent attention. It is incomprehensible that she faces further trauma as punishment for crimes that she did not commit.

Nazanin is an innocent victim of a political dispute. We reiterate that the Thomson Reuters Foundation does not work in Iran, and that Nazanin had never travelled to Iran for work-related reasons.

Nazanin must be given her permanent freedom and allowed the reunion with her family which she has been so cruelly denied.

Antonio Zappulla, Thomson Reuters Foundation CEO