Brit mum Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s husband begs for her release from Iran jail

THE desperate husband of a Brit mum jailed in Iran has begged for her release ahead of her 40th birthday on Boxing Day.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian mother who works for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, was arrested at Tehran's Imam Khomeini airport in April 2016.

The charity worker, of Hampstead in north London, was later sentenced to five years in jail after being accused of spying, a charge she vehemently denies.

Her husband, Richard Ratcliffe, and London Mayor Sadiq Khan have called her incarceration a "travesty of justice".

In a statement, the pair said: "With Christmas approaching and, as Nazanin turns 40 on Boxing Day, we are calling on the Iranian authorities to release her at once so she can return home and be reunited with her family.

"Nazanin has been wrongly detained in an Iranian prison for over two years. She has done nothing wrong, has broken no laws.

"The charges against her are completely false.

"She is innocent and should not be kept in prison, separated for so long from her family and her young daughter."

The heartbroken husband said Nazanin continues to suffer both physically and mentally while imprisoned.

He added: "We - and indeed the whole country - know what a travesty of justice it is that Nazanin continues to be detained.

"Together, we are united in calling on the Iranian authorities to release Nazanin immediately along with the others who are being wrongly detained, to allow them to return home and be reunited with their loved ones.

"We are grateful to the Foreign Secretary for prioritising her case and trying to secure her release. "

Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt pressed his Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Zarif, about her case in September when they met in New York on the fringes of a United Nations General Assembly.

The month before, she had been granted a three-day release but her request for an extension was denied and she was forced to say goodbye to her four-year-old daughter, Gabriella, and return to jail.