Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe: Forced Confession Debate
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Lord Cormack
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Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe: Forced Confession
Lord Cormack Excerpts(2 years, 7 months ago)
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Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
My Lords, certainly in terms of what I have said we have always said that we would settle the IMS debt. We have now done so and the payment was made in full compliance with our international obligations, international sanctions and global counterterrorism financing. It was in parallel with the release of the nationals, but equally it was a debt. We have never accepted that our nationals be used as diplomatic leverage and we paid the debt because it was owed.
Lord Cormack (Con)
My Lords, anybody who saw the programme last night would have been, as the noble Baroness said, deeply moved by the dignity of this woman—it was amazing. Has the Foreign Secretary, since Nazanin returned to this country, summoned the Iranian ambassador and torn him off a strip and told him just how appalling it is that this forced confession should have been a condition of her leaving the country?