Iran rejects ‘conditional release’ for Iranian-British woman – By Amir Vahdat (AP News) / Dec 22 2019
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — The lawyer of an Iranian-British woman convicted on spying charges in Iran has asked that she be released after serving half of her sentence, a request that was immediately rejected by the Tehran prosecutors’office, the state IRNA news agency reported Sunday.
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who works for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, was sentenced to five years for allegedly planning the “soft toppling” of Iran’s government while traveling with her young daughter in Iran at the time. She was was arrested in April 2016. Her sentence has been widely criticized and her family has denied all the allegations against her.
The report by IRNA quoted her lawyer, Mahmoud Behzadi Rad, as saying that he had submitted a request for what Iran’s judiciary calls “conditional release” — when a convict has served half his or her sentence, the person can apply for such a release and the courts have the power to grant it for “good behavior”.
“According to the law, she is entitled to apply for a conditional release,” the lawyer said.
IRNA did not say why the request was denied. Behzadi Rad said he had applied for a conditional release for another of his clients, prominent Iranian human rights activist Narges Mohammadi who is serving a 10-year sentence. Behzadi Rad is her lawyer, too. The request for her release was also denied, he said.
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Nazanin Boniadi, left, actress and activist, Sarah Moriarty, the daughter of Robert Levinson, a U.S. hostage in Iran, Babak Namazi, the brother of Siamak Namazi and son of Baquer Namazi, who are both being held hostage in Iran, and Richard Ratcliffe, the husband of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a U.K. hostage in Iran, speak about their family members who are being held hostage in Iran, Tuesday, Dec. 3, 2019, during a news conference in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
