“Is that mummy?" Few could fail to be moved by the excited voice of Gabriella Zaghari-Ratcliffe as she watched her mother, Nazanin, step back onto British soil for the first time since her arrest in Iran six years ago.
Nazanin’s homecoming is a remarkable victory for her determined husband, Richard, and the millions of ordinary Britons who joined his long campaign for her release. More extraordinary still is Nazanin’s own survival through her traumatic detention, including four years locked up in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison.
Nazanin is known to have been tortured at the hands of the Iranian authorities. A medical report commissioned by REDRESS describes her subjection to sensory and sleep deprivation, prolonged solitary confinement and extensive periods of being blindfolded, chained and handcuffed. Doctors from the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims who examined her, documented symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and obsessive compulsive disorder.
Freedom from Torture, dedicated to healing and protecting people who have survived torture, has for decades provided therapy and forensic medical reports to many hundreds of Iranian survivors of torture in the UK. Indeed, we work with more Iranians than almost any other nationality.
Nazanin’s ordeal bears many of the hallmarks of Iran’s sophisticated torture apparatus. A distinctive feature of is the intensity of psychological abuse. A senior Iranian clinician once explained to me that Iranian torture methods have been honed with the complicity of psychologists - to maximise psychological damage and ensure that it endures for years after the torture ends.
One aspect of Nazanin’s case which resonates strongly with the experiences of Iranians we support, is the cruel way in which her young daughter was instrumentalised in her abuse. Nazanin has described threats to Gabriella and her dread of a particular guard who would sit outside her cell and phone her own daughter, of a similar age to Gabriella. In Freedom from Torture’s report about torture in Iran, Turning a Blind Eye, we described how detainees are commonly threatened with retribution against family members or themselves if they refuse to submit. This also makes speaking out about their experiences terrifying for anyone who, like Nazanin, still has loved ones in Iran.
The ordeal of Nazanin’s detention is over, but her recovery has only just begun. Her husband Richard has described the healing journey ahead, “I don’t think it will just be today, there will be a whole process, and hopefully we’ll look back in years to come and just be a normal family and this will be a chapter in our lives, but there are many more chapters to come.”
Many of the Iranians who we treat are near broken when they enter our doors, usually after referral from the NHS or other support agencies. They suffer from poor psychological health, with exceptionally high rates of paranoia and self-harm. For many, it takes months and often years for them to recover and rebuild their lives.
Nazanin and Anoosheh Ashoori, another dual Iranian-British national released at the same time, have arrived to the warmest of welcomes from the British public, MPs and the British media.
Our clients – all of whom have suffered torture, many of them in the same Evin prison where both Nazanin and Anoosheh were held – receive no such welcome. Most have arrived via difficult and irregular routes. In fact, Iranians are the most common nationality of those reaching Britain via dangerous dinghy journeys across the Channel. Many are disbelieved by the Home Office and forced into years of limbo while they fight debilitating appeals against the wrongful rejection of their asylum claims. In 2021, almost 70% of asylum refusals for Iranians were overturned on appeal.
The Nationality and Borders Bill, which returns to the House of Commons next week, will make their lives worse through provisions that would criminalise asylum seekers who reach Britain without a visa. They would face up to 4 years imprisonment and denial of safety, merely for relying on the right laid down in the UN Refugee Convention to claim asylum on arrival. We know from our clients who have been tortured, just how much additional trauma is brought on by detention.
Other provisions in the bill would mean that refugees from Iran and elsewhere face the risk of ejection from Britain and warehousing in immigration prisons elsewhere. Anyone who needs convincing of why the UK must reject this idea should read No Friend But the Mountains by Behrouz Boochani, a Kurdish-Iranian journalist who experienced and exposed the brutality of Australia’s offshore prison camp on Manus Island.
We may never know the terms on which Nazanin and Anoosheh were released but we can safely assume that securing justice will be an uphill struggle for both of them. Like most torturing states, Iran seeks to discredit survivors who tell their stories and resists accountability. Only once, as far as we are aware, has a senior Iranian diplomat ever publicly admitted that torture might happen in the country – when confronted at the United Nations with Freedom from Torture’s forensic evidence. Whether the British government would support any case for justice remains to be seen.
On the very first day of her return to Britain, Nazanin is known to have pleaded with British politicians to help secure the release of Morad Tahbaz, a Londoner with British, US and Iranian nationality who was thought to be returning with the other two but has since been re-detained in Iran. It is safe to assume that countless others are still being held in violation of fair trial standards and subjected to torture and other abuses. They must not be forgotten. Like Nazanin, we must hold them in our thoughts and urge our governments to exert more pressure on Iran to bring these nightmares to an end.
Sonya Sceats is Chief Executive of Freedom from Torture which is dedicated to healing and protecting people who have survived torture.
You can follow her on Twitter: @SonyaSceats
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