Iranian-British woman faces alleged coup charge in Iran

Iran has accused a British-Iranian charity worker arrested after visiting family with her two-year-old daughter of seeking to “overthrow the regime”.

No charges have been filed in the case, but Zaghari-Ratcliffe has told family members in Iran that she was forced to sign a confession under duress, her husband said last month.

According to IRNA, the Sarallah Corps, which arrested Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe, said in a statement: “Through membership in foreign companies and institutions, she has participated in designing and executing media and cyber plots with the aim of the peaceful overthrow of the Islamic Republic establishment”.

IRNA’s report marks the first official acknowledgment of the detention of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who works for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of the news agency.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe moved to the United Kingdom to study in 2007, and married her British husband Richard Ratcliffe, 41, two years later.

Gabriella is being taken care of by her maternal grandparents in Tehran, according to the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran (ICHRI).

Her husband, Richard Ratcliffe, said his wife took her daughter to visit family for Nowruz, the Iranian New Year.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s file has been sent to Tehran to begin judicial proceedings but officials from the intelligence wing of the Revolutionary Guard are still interrogating her, according to the statement.

The statement – the first time the Iranian authorities have officially acknowledged they have detained Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe – also confirmed she is being kept in a furnished room in a prison in the southeastern city of Kerman, 621 miles away from her daughter Gabriella, whose passport has also been confiscated.

It said Britain has not been granted consular access to Zaghari-Ratcliffe because Iran does not recognize dual nationality.

The Revolutionary Guards said Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe was “identified and arrested after massive intelligence operations” as one of “the heads of foreign-linked hostile networks”, the Mizan news agency reported. The Foreign Office responded by saying: “We have raised this case repeatedly and at the highest levels and will continue to do so at every available opportunity”.

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — An Iranian-British woman detained in Iran faces charges of trying to cause the “soft toppling” of the government, a state-run news agency reported Wednesday, the latest in a series of cases in which dual nationals have been detained since last year’s nuclear deal with world powers. It was published by a Guard office in Kerman province, where Zaghari-Ratcliffe is being held.

Her husband on Wednesday dismissed the charges in an interview with AFP. Reuters has not had a bureau in Iran since 2012, when their all their staff’s press accreditation was suspended following a mistake in a story about women’s martial arts training.