Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
Margaret Ferrier
Main Page: Margaret Ferrier (Independent - Rutherglen and Hamilton West)Department Debates - View all Margaret Ferrier's debates with the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
(2 years, 5 months ago)
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Tulip Siddiq
I thank the right hon. Member for his intervention. He is absolutely right, because those countries have brought their people home. Indeed, Australia actually managed to bring Nazanin’s prison cellmate back home, while Nazanin herself is still in Iran. So I hope that the Minister will pay attention to what the right hon. Member has just said, because he makes a very important point.
Regarding the debt, I will come back to something that the Secretary of State for Defence has said:
“With regard to IMS Ltd and the outstanding legal dispute the government acknowledges there is a debt to be paid and continues to explore every legal avenue for the lawful discharge of that debt.”
So if anyone questions whether we owe the money, we definitely owe the money, as has been stated several times. It is not a ransom; it is a debt that we as a country should lawfully pay back to Iran.
Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Ind)
Nuclear negotiations restart on 29 November and there is a risk that both Nazanin’s case and Anoosheh Ashoori’s case will be used as leverage. The negotiations are complex and we cannot risk these cases becoming entangled in them. Does the hon. Lady agree that the Government need to have a plan in place to ensure that these cases do not get caught up in the nuclear negotiations?
Tulip Siddiq
I thank the hon. Member for her intervention. I think that Members from across the House can probably hear the frustration in my voice, because I am very worried that my constituent is getting caught up in this overall universal problem and becoming a pawn between the two countries. Her husband has maintained from day one that she is a pawn caught between the two countries, which is unacceptable.