In an exclusive interview as his wife faces her fifth Christmas as a prisoner, Richard Ratcliffe tells why he fears even the end of her sentence won’t see her freed
It was after they had decorated the Christmas tree that Gabriella Ratcliffe started crying herself to sleep again. “She has been quite tearful for a few nights now, asking me ‘when is Mummy coming back?’ – which she hadn’t been doing,” said her father Richard Ratcliffe. “It’s all the associations of Christmas and family.”
For the fifth year in a row, his wife Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe will spend Christmas Day – and her birthday, which is on Boxing Day – a prisoner in Iran. Only she isn’t merely a prisoner, Ratcliffe says; she’s a hostage. And it’s vital the government acknowledges that: “There has been a real reluctance on the part of the British government and the wider world to call out Iran’s hostage taking, which has enabled it.”
