Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 7th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Dr Murrison]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I am not interested in political point scoring. I am interested in getting Nazanin back home. I pay tribute to Richard Ratcliffe, whom I have had the pleasure of meeting. I was struck by his sincerity. He has done an extraordinary job on behalf of Nazanin, and I salute him for that. The hon. Gentleman is right—Iran is acting unlawfully under international humanitarian law, which it has clearly breached. It needs to be brought back into line. My advice to my interlocutors in Tehran, if it were sought, would be, “Do so, and your reputation will increase. You will be one step closer to being shoulder to shoulder in the international panoply of nations, which is where you desire to be.”

This does Iran no good. I appeal on humanitarian grounds in relation to Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe. I would also appeal on the basis of Iran’s reputation. While these harrowing, dreadful cases continue, it cannot possibly expect to be able to deal with the wider world in the way that, I think, it wishes.

The hon. Gentleman asked about access. He must know that our access to Nazanin is non-existent. We are forbidden by Tehran to access Nazanin in the way that we would expect to have access to British nationals. I regret that. It would be extremely helpful to move this on if we were allowed to have access to Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe. I would strongly urge my ministerial interlocutors to consider that as a reasonable thing for us to have. That is what we require as a minimum in the near future so that we can determine for ourselves many things on which the hon. Gentleman touched.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

In the middle of last month, it emerged that yet another person, Kylie Moore-Gilbert, a Cambridge-educated British-Australian academic, has been banged up in Iran, probably as a hostage for something as yet officially unspoken, for anything up to a year of a 10-year sentence for spying, so-called. Are there any other cases, without going into specifics, of which the Government are aware of people being held hostage in this way? Given the track record from the earliest days of the Islamic revolution in Iran of taking hostages and using them for nefarious purposes, what advice does the Foreign Office give to British dual nationals and others about the wisdom or otherwise of visiting that country?

[Dr Murrison]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend. Foreign Office advice is available on the Foreign Office website, and is updated periodically. On other cases, yes, there are number of cases with which we are dealing. I am afraid I cannot be drawn, for reasons that he will understand, either on the precise number of those cases or their identity, except insofar as they or their families wish the matter to be made public. We have to be led very much by individuals’ wishes, which is why I am being a little cautious about giving a full answer to the question that my right hon. Friend asked.