Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who has been held in Tehran since 2016, has had her British passport returned, her local MP in London said on Tuesday, raising hopes for her release.
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“I am very pleased to say that Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has been given her British passport back,” Labour MP Tulip Siddiq wrote on her Twitter account.
“I also understand that there is a British negotiating team in Tehran right now,” she added.
There was no immediate confirmation or comment from the foreign ministry in London when contacted by AFP.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe was arrested during a visit to her family in the Iranian capital in 2016 and convicted of plotting to overthrow the government. She was jailed for five years.
She was then sentenced to another year’s imprisonment in April last year for participating in a rally outside the Iranian embassy in London in 2009.
The project manager for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the philanthropic arm of the news and data agency, has always strenuously denied the accusations.
Her employer quoted her lawyer, Hojjat Kermani, as saying: “I am hopeful that we will have good news soon.”
Her husband, Richard Ratcliffe, believes his wife is being used as a political pawn between London and Tehran over an unpaid debt dating back to the time of the Shah of Iran.
He staged a hunger strike outside the foreign ministry in London last October after she lost her latest appeal, and as government ministers held talks with Iranian counterparts.
She was freed from prison with an electronic tag in March 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic.
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