Tulip Siddiq is leading the charge against UK foreign secretary Boris Johnson after he made a gaffe over the plight of a British Iranian woman in prison in Iran.
The daughter of Sheikh Rehana, the younger sister of Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, and Labour party MP for Hampstead and Kilburn has been campaigning on behalf of her constituent Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe to be released from prison in Tehran over false allegations of plotting against the country’s government.
Johnson, speaking to the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee last week, had inadvertently mentioned that Zaghari-Ratcliffe was teaching journalism during her visit to Tehran when she was arrested. The Thomson Reuters Foundation described his comments as a “serious mistake” as the dual British and Iranian nation who works for the charity is neither a journalist nor a journalism teacher. It is feared his erroneous statement could add a further five years to Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s current five-year sentence.
Siddiq demanded that Johnson “must resign” if her constituent had to spend an extra day in jail as result of the foreign minister’s error.
“Boris Johnson must retract his comments and make this right. He must honour his promise to the select committee to visit Nazanin or her family, and his contributions on this matter should start reflecting his status as Britain’s most senior diplomat. If he is incapable of doing so, he would be wise to consider his position,” she said.
Johnson has since tried to back-track over the issue, which has made his position in the UK Cabinet very tenuous.
"The UK government has no doubt that she was on holiday in Iran when she was arrested last year," he told the Commons on being questioned over the issue in Parliament by Siddiq on Tuesday.
But the Labour MP remains unconvinced: “Half-hearted clarifications are not enough. Nazanin deserves a full retraction and apology.”
Zaghari-Ratcliffe was detained at Tehran airport in April last year at the end of a visit to Iran with her daughter. Her family has maintained that she had made the journey purely as a holiday for her daughter to meet with her Iranian grandparents.
She was summoned to a Tehran court on November 4, where Johnson's comment to the Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee last week was cited as new evidence for what the Iranian judiciary has maintained all along, that she was allegedly “spreading propaganda against the regime”.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe's London-based husband, Richard Ratcliffe, has maintained his wife’s innocence and urged Johnson to retract the statement and do more to bring her back home to the UK.
In a phone call to Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif, Johnson said his remarks provided "no justifiable basis" for further legal action and that he intended to visit Iran before the end of the year to discuss the case.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe was sentenced to imprisonment following a trial where she was accused of attempting to overthrow the Iranian government. She denies all the allegations against her but lost her final appeal in April this year. She had been eligible for parole under the early release scheme from November 23 but her husband now fears that she could face a fresh trial before that date to block her chance of freedom.
