According to the UK media, which cited Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s lawyer Hojjat Kermani, the 42-year-old UK-Iranian national has now been sentenced on charges of “propaganda activities against the regime”, after serving a five-year term previously imposed on her in 2016.
“Iran's decision to sentence Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe to another year in prison is cruel, inhumane and wholly unjustified. She must be allowed to return to her family in the UK and we will continue to do all we can to get her home”, Johnson wrote on Twitter.
Raab also took the social media platform to condemn the alleged new sentence, calling it a “totally inhumane and wholly unjustified decision”.
"We continue to call on Iran to release Nazanin immediately so she can return to her family in the UK. We continue to do all we can to support her", the foreign secretary added.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a Thomson Reuters Foundation employee at the time, was arrested in Iran in April 2016 on suspicion of plotting against the Iranian government. Sentenced to five years behind bars, she was released from prison and put under house arrest in March, 2020, on COVID-19 grounds.
In March this year, after her prison term expired, Iranian authorities released her from house arrest and had her ankle tag removed, but did not allowed her to return to the UK claiming that she could face further charges.
