Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe shares first photo of freedom on flight home

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has shared a photo of herself on board a flight returning from Tehran to the UK - after six years in detention.

The 44-year-old mother-of-one is returning to her home in West Hampstead after being held in Iran since 2016.

Prime minister Boris Johnson and foreign secretary Liz Truss have confirmed that both her and Anoosheh Ashoori will be reunited with their families later today.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s MP Tulip Siddiq tweeted the photo saying: “It’s been six long years - and I can’t believe I can FINALLY share this photo.

“Nazanin is now in the air flying away from six years of hell in Iran.

“My heart goes out to Gabriella and Richard, as her long journey back home to them gets closer by the minute.”

An Iranian journalist tweeted a video of Nazanin getting on a plane.

Nazanin was arrested on April 3 2016 in Tehran Airport under bogus spying charges.

She was returning home to the UK with Gabriella, then just one, after visiting her family in Iran.

Nazanin then spent two years in prison, while Gabriella stayed with her grandparents in Tehran.

She was granted a temporary release in 2018, before returning to prison, where she suffered panic attacks.

In 2019, Gabriella, now seven, returned to the UK, where husband Richard has been living, and Nazanin has not seen her since.

Richard has been campaigning for her freedom and has embarked on two hunger strikes.

In March 2020, at the start of the Covid pandemic, she was released on parole, and allowed to stay at her parents’ house in Tehran.

In March 2021 her sentence ended, however a month later she was found guilty of “propaganda activities against the government” and sentenced to another year in prison.

It is thought that the agreement to release both Nazanin and Anoosheh Ashoori is the result of an agreement over a £400million arms debt the government reportedly had with Iran.