Why has Iran imprisoned Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe?

The jailing of a British citizen highlights a crackdown on journalists at home and abroad

BEHIND the grimy frosted windows of an abandoned shopfront in the backstreets of central London lies a plush modern office, full of banks of computer screens monitoring Iran’s internet output. The office is one of many Western media projects working to outwit the censors who seek to suppress all but the official discourse of Iran’s Islamic Republic. Much of the funding comes from America’s Near East Regional Democracy programme, which allocates about $30m a year to promoting democracy and human rights in Iran.

The camouflage is well merited. Iran’s secretive regime has long hounded the country’s journalists. It is one of the world’s worst abusers of press freedom. It restricts visas for foreign reporters and assigns “translators” to those who visit, to monitor their every word. Fearful of regular round-ups, many Iranian journalists have fled to Europe. But the regime has pursued them into exile. Earlier this year it ordered the seizure of the Iranian assets of 152 contributors to the BBC Persian service, which has an audience of 13m Iranians. This month Ahmad Mola Nissi, an Iranian-Arab activist, was shot dead on a street in The Hague. Fellow activists suspect the long arm of Iran.

For the guardians of Iran’s revolution, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a dual British-Iranian citizen, made an easy catch. She was preparing to board a plane home from Tehran with her toddler after a holiday in April 2016 when goons from the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps nabbed her. She had previously worked for the BBC Persian Service and was employed in London for the charitable arm of the Thomson Reuters news organisation. Prosecutors charged her with spying and transferred her to the south-eastern city of Kerman.

They accused her of designing websites to support “the sedition”, a reference to the mass demonstrations that erupted following rigged presidential elections in 2009. They also suspected her of previously training Iranian journalists abroad, including a group from Narenji, a website specialising in new technology, who had received heavy jail terms a year earlier. She was sentenced to five years in prison for working to overthrow the regime.

Remarks by Britain’s foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, have made matters worse. On November 1st he incorrectly said that Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe had been training foreign journalists on her recent trip. Though he belatedly retracted his statement, it provided grounds for a new judge to consider a retrial in prison.

Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s case highlights the power struggle within Iran’s clerical establishment. The president, Hassan Rouhani, wants to improve ties with Europe, particularly in the face of a hostile American president. But he looks powerless against the Revolutionary Guards and the judges who answer to the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Since 2015 Iran has detained at least 19 dual nationals with European passports. Most are accused of spying. “Going back to Iran is now out of the question,” says an Iranian journalist in London.

Britain considers negotiating prisoner releases tantamount to paying ransom for hostages. Other governments have fewer scruples. Last year the Obama administration secured the release of Jason Rezaian, a correspondent for the Washington Post in Tehran, who had been sentenced for espionage and spent 18 months in detention. The same day, America delivered $400m in cash which had been frozen in Iranian accounts. After Iran’s deal with six world powers to limit its nuclear programme in return for the lifting of sanctions took effect in January 2016, Britain released all but £70m ($90m) of the £728m in Iranian accounts it had frozen. When Mr Johnson heads to Iran later this year to plead for Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s release, the regime might be hoping that he takes the outstanding funds with him. /The Economist