UK to pay £400m to free Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, Iranian state media reports

2 May 2021, 14:57 | Updated: 2 May 2021, 16:46

British-Iranian woman Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe could be freed after years in prison, according to Iranian state TV, which reports the UK has agreed to pay £400 million to clear historic debts with Tehran.

However, the reports on Iranian state TV - attributed to an anonymous Iranian official - have been played down by UK officials, who said Iran had made the claim before.

Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe's husband, Richard Ratcliffe, said the family "haven't heard anything".

"It's probably a good sign that it's being signalled, just as last week's sentence was a bad sign. But it feels part of the negotiations rather than the end of them."

The US has also said the reports of a prisoner swap are "not true".

The £400 million debt relates to the non-delivery of tanks from Britain ordered by the Shah of Iran before he was overthrown in the Islamic Revolution of 1979.

In September 2020, UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace wrote to lawyers acting for Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe, acknowledging for the first time that there was a debt to be payed and adding the government were exploring "every legal avenue" to pay it.

Reacting to the Iranian state TV reports, a Foreign Office spokesman said: "We continue to explore options to resolve this 40-year-old case and will not comment further as legal discussions are ongoing."

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The chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Tom Tugendhat MP, said he had been told "reports of a deal are wrong".

"The cruelty shown to Nazanin and her family is a stain on the Teheran administration that has tortured and robbed its own for 40 years," he tweeted.

Last week, Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe was sentenced to another year in prison in Iran, on top of a five-year sentence she already served in the Islamic Republic.

While employed at the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of the news agency, Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe was taken into custody at Tehran airport in April 2016 as she was returning home to Britain after visiting family with her daughter.

She was convicted of plotting the overthrow of Iran's government, a charge that she, her supporters and rights groups deny.

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The US State Department has also denied reports on state TV that American prisoners will be released in exchange for $7 billion (£5 billion) in frozen Iranian funds.

"Reports that a prisoner swap deal has been reached are not true," spokesman Ned Price said.

"As we have said, we always raise the cases of Americans detained or missing in Iran. We will not stop until we are able to reunite them with their families."

Last Monday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson acknowledged "we are working with our American friends on this issue".