Zaghari-Ratcliffe reacted with incredulity, insisting she was innocent, according to her husband, who remains in the UK. She was described as shivering, shaking and crying when the deputy prosecutor told her earlier in the day that she had to be separated from her daughter again.
“This feels a dark world. I used to pray, but these past two years I’ve lost much of my faith. Who would take a child from their mother?” she said on the phone to her husband, Richard Ratcliffe, before going back to prison.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe was told earlier in the day that authorities had approved a request put in by her lawyer for an extension to the furlough, but the prosecutor’s office notified her later that a permit had not been signed off and she had to return to prison.
She visited the prosecutor’s office just after midday on Sunday – she was told she did not have to return to prison at least for that day. While on her way home, her interrogators told her the extension had been approved due to her good behaviour while being on prison leave. But 10 minutes after arriving home, she received another call from the prosecutor’s office, informing her that she had to return to Evin prison before sunset.
“How can you take me away from my baby when she needs me,” she was quoted as saying to the deputy prosecutor, according to her husband.
Ratcliffe said his wife had decided to return to the prison voluntarily to avoid being dragged out of bed in the middle of the night and the upset that would cause to four-year-old Gabriella.
Kate Allen, Amnesty International UK’s director, said the news was a crushing disappointment. “There were real hopes that not only would her three-day furlough be extended, but that her permanent and unconditional release was also just around the corner,” she said.
The UK Foreign Office said: “We remain very concerned about all our dual nationals detained in Iran, and continue to make decisions in line with what we believe will produce the best outcomes in their cases,” but did not specifically comment about Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s return to prison.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe was arrested in April 2016 as she and her daughter were about to board a flight back to the UK after a visit to her family in Iran. She was accused of attempting to orchestrate a “soft overthrow” of the Islamic Republic, spying and running “a BBC Persian online journalism course which was aimed at recruiting and training people to spread propaganda against Iran”. She denies the allegations.
On Saturday night, the last night she spent with Gabriella before finding out she had to return to prison, Zaghari-Ratcliffe sent a text to her husband, who is in Edinburgh attending a play about her ordeal, called Nazanin’s Story.