Tehran demanded £27,000 to release UK-Iran national: family

LONDON: The family of a UK/Iranian man freed this week after spending five years in a Tehran jail were forced to pay Iran £27,000 ($36,500, 33,000 euros) in order to secure his return home, they said on Saturday.

Anoosheh Ashoori, a retired engineer from southeast London, was arrested in 2017 and jailed for 10 years on charges of spying for Israel. He flew home on Wednesday having been released along with compatriot Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe after Britain reached a deal with Tehran over a historic military contract debt.

But his release was only secured after the family were able to meet a last-minute demand to pay a fine, they said. "On March 14th, Dad’s conditional release was signed and communicated to us," the family wrote on fundraising site Crowdfunder.

"We had been waiting for 5 years for Dad to come home and were suddenly told that the only thing now stopping this...was an arbitrary £27,000 fine which we suddenly had to pay," they added.

"We had less than 12 hours to raise the money, taking out loans using our credit cards, and opening new accounts," Ashoori’s wife, Sherry Izadi, told the Guardian in comments published on Saturday. "My only thought was: ‘How are we going to do this in time?’" The Crowdfunder appeal had already raised more than £33,000 on Saturday, £6,000 above the target.