Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe wants to focus on being a full-time mother now that she is back in Britain, although her employer has said her job is open and promoted her while she was in jail.
The British-Iranian aid worker spent her first night back in the UK in six years beside her husband Richard Ratcliffe and their seven-year-old daughter Gabriella at a government-run safe house where they are expected to stay until at least the start of next week.
Ratcliffe, 45, told The Times that the family had no specific recovery plan but acknowledged that it was “probably time to start developing one”. He said that an eventual campaigning role remained a possibility but that his wife’s immediate focus was on her family.
“People come out with an extra will to make up for lost time and to stop others having to battle against the bad guys that they feel are responsible,” he said. “And that can take different directions. While I’m sure she’s happy today, I can’t tell where her head will be in six months. I’m sure she’s feeling a lot less angry today than she was a week ago. There’s nothing like freedom for changing your perspective.
“I think Nazanin was not a political person, she felt she was someone that had just started a family and was enjoying being a mum. I think that’s what she’ll want to recover first. And who knows where she wants to be in terms of having a public profile because that changes what doors are open to you and what doors are closed to you.”
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At the time of her 2016 arrest for allegedly trying to overthrow the Iranian regime, Zaghari-Ratcliffe, 43, was a project co-ordinator for the Thomson Reuters Foundation. Antonio Zappulla, the charity’s chief executive, said that it had been “surreal” to see her return. He said: “We kept her post open and never really replaced Nazanin. In fact, we promoted her when she was away. The role is there. We have already set up top-level support that she might need.”
Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori, 67, a British-Iranian retired civil engineer detained in Iran in 2017, were released on Wednesday after Britain agreed to pay a decades-old debt of £393.8 million to Iran relating to a contract for undelivered tanks. The pair flew from Tehran to Oman and then to RAF Brize Norton, Oxfordshire, landing at 1.08am on Thursday. A third British citizen, Morad Tahbaz, was also released but remains in Iran under house arrest.
Zappulla said that colleagues were overjoyed at Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s release but acknowledged that she needed time to go through a “healing process”. He said that during their repeated contact over the past two years he repeatedly assured her that the job would remain open. “Obviously at the time [of her detention] coming back to work was such a distant concept for her because freedom was not in her grasp,” he said. “Now that it is, I want her to know that she can come back any time.”
Lara Symons, head of the charity Hostage International, said that a poorly managed reintroduction to society could “exacerbate and arguably lengthen the already complex road to recovery”. She said: “The initial release can be really surreal, and it is really important that people affected have time to heal, take things slowly, don’t rush into making decisions and try to keep a routine.”
