LONDON: The daughter of a British man arbitrarily detained in Iran for more than four years has called on UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss to work with the family and “bring her father home.”
Roxanne Tahbaz has been petitioning the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office in Whitehall, and excoriated the UK government for “abandoning” her father, Morad Tahbaz, following the release of Anoosheh Ashoori and Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe last month.
“We really hope that Liz Truss has heard our pleas — all we want is for her to bring our father home,” Tahbaz told Amnesty International.
“We’re delighted for Nazanin and Anoosheh — we’re truly happy for them that they’ve been reunited with their families. But my father has been abandoned – it isn’t right, it’s a devastating betrayal and it must be put right.
“Our parents must be brought home, urgently, without conditions — we need to be reunited. We want to sit down with (Truss) to understand the plan for getting my father home.”
London-born Tahbaz, who holds American, British, and Iranian nationality, and who co-founded the Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation, was arrested with eight others in January 2018 by Iranian authorities on suspicion of using their environmental projects as a cover for espionage.
In November 2019 he was sentenced to 10 years in prison over alleged “contacts with the US enemy government” a decision described by UN human rights experts as absurd.
It is understood that part of the problem in securing Tahbaz’s release is linked to complications related to his US citizenship, but Amnesty has stepped up its efforts to see him returned to London with its “No-one Left Behind” campaign.
Amnesty’s UK CEO Sacha Seshmukh said: “The government’s job is only half-done — Nazanin and Anoosheh are home, but Morad isn’t and neither is Mehran Raoof.
“We’ve launched our campaign today to keep Morad and Mehran in the public eye and to press government to do more. It shouldn’t need a superhuman effort from families to jolt government into taking action on behalf of British nationals arbitrarily jailed in Iran.”
Raoof, another British-Iranian held by the Revolutionary Guard, has been in solitary confinement since his arrest in October 2020.
His spokesperson, Satar Rahmani, told the press the release of Ashoori and Zaghari-Ratcliffe was “wonderful and extremely important” but expressed concern and confusion over the government’s seeming failure to secure the release of other Brits held by Iran.