16 March 2024 , 09:00
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It's been two years since British-Iranian mum Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was released from Iranian prison.
The charity worker was taking her daughter Gabriella, then two, to see her family in 2016 when she was arrested in Tehran and accused of plotting to overthrow the Iranian government, which she had always denied. Nazanin was sentenced to five years in jail, spending four years in Evin Prison and one under house arrest.
During her six-year nightmare, the mum-of-one said she was chained and blindfolded in prison and interrogated for nine hours at a time in solitary with bright lights and blaring TVs. Her husband Richard said Nazanin, who spent a week in a psychiatric hospital chained to the bed in 2018, was even left suicidal.
Intense negotiations of a £400million debt led to the release of Nazanin and British Iranian Anoosheh Ashoori, who was also accused of spying, on March 16, 2022. Here, we take a look at her life since she was reunited with her seven-year-old daughter and husband two years ago.
Nazanin reunited with her daughter and husband in March 2022
The family were finally back together after six years apartIn March 2022, Nazanin's sister-in-law Rebecca Ratcliffe said the family was looking forward to enjoying the normal experiences others take for granted. Speaking to BBC Radio 4, she said: "They have lived apart for such a long time, had such different experiences, they are not going to go back to how they were before. Of course, they won't.
'I ventured into Alcatraz after dark and was terrified by what I saw and heard'
"They are never going to be a normal family. I think there is an element of having those normal experiences that they haven't been able to for such a long time. Go swimming together, go to the supermarket together, go out for walks - all those things the rest of us take for granted when we have got children that they are looking forward to."
In her first public press conference at Parliament, Nazanin said of her detainment: "It will always haunt me", before adding that authorities in Iran told her she could not be released until they got "something off the Brits". She said that a payment leading to her freedom "should have happened six years ago".
Nazanin pictured in May 2022, two months after she returned (PA)In October 2022, Nazanin joined thousands of protestors in London calling for regime change in Iran following the death of a woman in police custody. Speaking exclusively to the Sunday Mirror, she said: "I wanted to be in Trafalgar Square with everyone to show solidarity to the Iranian women inside Iran, whether free in the streets standing up for their rights or now locked up in prison for defending them."
In July 2023, she was invited by Andy Murray to watch Wimbledon in the Royal Box, alongside the Princess of Wales and Roger Federer. At the time, Murray said: "She seemed happy I got the win. It was brilliant she could come along. I found it very emotional listening to her and hearing her story and decided I wanted her to come and watch in a better place."
Back in July 2016, Nazanin was granted access to a TV with two channels in Evin prison, after months without books or newspapers. One showed Iranian soaps and the other Wimbledon tennis matches. She watched as Murray secured his second Wimbledon title.
More than six years later, she told Murray on Radio 4: "I was always a big fan of you, but also there I was in solitary confinement watching the match that you actually won in the end. I can't tell you how joyful it was and I was ecstatic just to see you win."
Nazanin sat in the Royal Box in July 2023 to watch Andy Murray at Wimbledon (PA)Most recently, Nazanin spoke of her "constant worry" about her family in Iran and said she cannot return to the country where she was locked up for six years. At the Scottish Liberal Democrat conference in November 2023, she said it had been "very hard to adjust" to life in the UK and she had "underestimated how tough freedom would be".
Nazanin said: "When we gather with my friends I tell jokes about prison, which is strange because prison is a bad place, it is a very grim, bleak experience. But over time you forget the bad parts of it and you remember the jokes and the funny things." She continued: "I came out, I had to rebuild my relationship with our family, and with the neighbourhood and community and society.
"I am a different person, Richard has changed, my daughter is nine. When I left her she wasn't even two, so we are very different people." The charity project manager, now 46, explained that her family is still in Iran and she has few ways to contact them. "It is a constant worry about my country, my family, my parents, my friends," she said.