British-Iranian aid worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has been handed over to a British team at Tehran’s International Imam Khomeini Airport and she is leaving Iran on Wednesday, Iranian state media reported.
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Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anousheh Ashouri, another detained British-Iranian, headed to Tehran airport to leave the country, their lawyer Hojjat Kermani told Reuters earlier on Wednesday, as Tehran and London pressed on with talks about a long-standing 400-million-pound ($520 mln) debt.
“Both of them are on their way to the airport in Tehran to leave Iran,” Kermani said. Iran’s judiciary officials were not available to comment.
Aid worker Zaghari-Ratcliffe has had her British passport returned, British lawmaker Tulip Siddiq said on Tuesday.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a project manager with the Thomson Reuters Foundation was arrested at a Tehran airport in April 2016 and later convicted by an Iranian court of plotting to overthrow the clerical establishment.
Her family and the foundation, a charity that operates independently of Thomson Reuters and its news subsidiary Reuters, deny the charge.
Ashouri was sentenced to 10 years in jail in 2019 for spying for Israel’s Mossad and two years for “acquiring illegitimate wealth”, according to Iran’s judiciary.
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