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Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has welcomed the appointment of the first ever dedicated envoy to help Britons detained abroad but warned it must not be an “excuse for the government’s inaction”.
The British-Iranian mother, who was imprisoned in Iran for six years until Britain settled a £400 million arms debt, has long called for the government to appoint a specialist to help families battling to get their loved ones home.
She said Alistair Burt’s new role was crucial to ensure families, such as those of Craig and Lindsay Foreman who are currently held in Iran, do not feel “invisible”, adding that it should not be up to relatives to be the “political force” driving efforts to secure their freedom.
Her husband, Richard Ratcliffe, led a six-year campaign – including staging a hunger strike outside the Foreign Office – to get Britain to repay the debt which led to her release.
“This is not the job of families,” she said. “This is the job of the government. They have to protect the citizens.”
Following her release in 2022, she criticised the government for the delay in securing her freedom, saying “what happened now should have happened six years ago”.
Speaking about her experience at Mr Burt’s first public appearance as envoy in Westminster on Monday, she added: “I was in prison. My life was destroyed for six years for something that had nothing to do with me.
“If you think about each person who is wrongfully detained or taken hostage, there is a whole tribe attached to that person. My child, my husband, my mum and dad, Rich’s parents.”
Although she said Mr Burt’s appointment was “very positive” she expressed a fear of quiet diplomacy turning into an “excuse” for government inaction.
“We don’t want to see that the government is hiding behind the fact that now we have got this team, we have got Alistair, we’ve got this kind of entity which is looking after the families of hostages, but then pretending that that’s it, and we can’t do anything else,” she said.
Mr Burt, a former Conservative Middle East minister, admitted the difficulties he will face in the role.
“I don’t make policy,” he said. “I’m not a minister. I don’t have that authority. It will ultimately be the foreign secretary and the prime minister who will need to make the changes in policy or changes in approach if required.”
However he said he can “kick the tyres” of the Foreign Office’s strategy and “support the families to ensure their views and interests are understood”.
“The best thing I can do is not disguise from you the difficulties of the role,” added the former minister, who is due to meet with new foreign secretary Ed Miliband later this week.
Naomi Connell, who is supporting the relatives of Craig and Lindsay Foreman, said it is “soul destroying” for families to feel like they are being “managed”.
The couple, both 53, were arrested on a motorbike tour in Iran and later sentenced to 10 years on espionage charges, which they completely deny. They have been held for more than 600 days, including three months on hunger strike.
She said it made a massive difference when Mr Burt visited their family at home recently, but called for the meeting to turn into action.
This summer The Independent revealed that Iran is seeking the return of an Iranian national who has languished in a maximum-security British prison for 23 years, as the couple urged British officials to consider an exchange.
Mr Foreman believes that Richard Jan, an Iranian stalker held in Britain, could be the only “only avenue” to negotiating their release after his case was raised by their jailers in a consular meeting.
A UK government spokesperson insisted there was “no truth whatsoever to the claims of a potential exchange arrangement”. However, former deputy prime minister David Lammy admitted that “arrangements can be made” when he was questioned about the issue on Sky News.