Jailed British-Iranian aid worker to face trial

DUBAI: A detained British-Iranian aid worker sentenced to five years in jail in Iran is to face a second trial on new security charges, the semi-official Tasnim news agency on Saturday quoted Tehran Revolutionary Court's head Musa Ghazanfarabadi as saying.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a project manager with the Thomson Reuters Foundation, was arrested in April 2016 at a Tehran airport as she was heading back to Britain with her two-year-old daughter after a family visit.

She was convicted of plotting to overthrow Iran’s clerical establishment, a charge denied by her family and the Foundation, a charity organisation that is independent of Thomson Reuters and operates independently of Reuters News.

British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson discussed Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s case with Iranian officials after flying to Tehran in December to try to seek her release. "Ghazanfarabadi said the charge against Zaghari in the new case is security-related but did not say whether it was espionage or another charge," Tasnim reported.

"Zaghari is to present an attorney and then the court will convene," Ghazanfarabadi said. Britain's Foreign Office, when approached for comment, said it would not provide a commentary on "every twist and turn". On Monday, British media reported that Zaghari-Ratcliffe had been told to expect another conviction after being taken to court last Saturday "for spreading propaganda against the state". In a statement on Monday, the Thomson Reuters Foundation said it totally rejected "the renewed accusations that Nazanin is guilty of spreading propaganda" and said it continued to assert her full innocence. In response to an urgent question in parliament on Tuesday about her situation, British Foreign Office minister Alistair Burt said Prime Minister Theresa May had raised all consular cases with President Hassan Rouhani in a call earlier this month.

He also said the British ambassador in Tehran had spoken to Zaghari-Ratcliffe last Sunday. "We remain of the assessment that a private, rather than public approach is most likely to result in progress in Nazanin's case and ultimately, her release, which is all any of us want," he said.