Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s husband criticises US-Iran prisoners release deal

The Guardian

Patrick Wintour Diplomatic editor

Aug27th2023

Two US residents, one in fear of execution, are being unfairly excluded from an imminent deal between US-Iran to release prisoners, the husband of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has claimed.

Richard Ratcliffe, whose wife was freed after five years in a Tehran prison
in 2022, said there was no legal reason why the two residents were not included in a deal to release five US citizens in return for the unfreezing of $6bn (£4.8bn) of Iranian assets in South Korea. It is also expected that four Iranians will be released from US jails.

Three of the five Iranian-Americans to be released have been named and are out of jail and in a hotel in Tehran waiting for the completion of the deal. Iran is said to have given undertakings to Qatar, an intermediary, about how Iranian assets in South Korea will be used only to purchase food and medicines, and not for military purposes.

Ratcliffe said he welcomed the release of Siamak Namazi, Emad Sharghi and Morad Tahbaz, who had all been sentenced to 10 years in prison on unsubstantiated charges of spying. “These are all families we campaigned with over many years who themselves have been left behind by other administrations,” he said.

But he said two US permanent residents, Shahab Dalili and Jamshid Sharmahd, a German citizen, remained “behind in an Iranian jail … partly because the US government had chosen not to classify them as wrongfully detained by Iran”. Under US legislation governing state hostage-taking, known as the Levinson Act, the country is supposed to provide protection not just to its wrongly detained citizens but to legal permanent residents.

The US Department of State denied that Dalili and Sharmahd had been forgotten or excluded.

“We are closely tracking both these cases. For privacy, safety, and operational reasons, we do not get into the details of our internal or diplomatic discussions on reported detainees,” a spokesperson said, adding that the US was demanding the immediate release of both prisoners. “Discussing the issue of detainees publicly is not productive or helpful to our goal of securing their release. Such discussions would be sensitive and highly consequential to those individuals and their families.”

Two children of Dalili and Sharmahd have for the past week staged a sit-in outside the state department in Washington DC, seeking a meeting with officials.

Sharmahd moved to California from Germany in 2003, but he was captured by Iranian intelligence in Dubai and sentenced to death for “corruption on Earth”.

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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/aug/27/nazanin-zaghari-ratcliffes-husband-criticises-us-iran-prisoners-release-deal