Zaghari-Ratcliffe, 43, who had dual British and Iranian nationality, and who returned to the UK in March after spending six years in detention in Iran, revealed on Monday she had been forced to sign a “false confession” in front of a UK government official before she was allowed to leave Iran.
She was arrested at a Tehran airport in April 2016 as she prepared to head back to Britain with her daughter after a family visit and was later jailed after being convicted of plotting to overthrow Iran’s clerical establishment.
On Tuesday junior Foreign Office minister Amanda Milling said a British government official had “passed on the message from the IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] that she needed to sign a confession” but denied they had ”forced” Zaghari-Ratcliffe to sign it.
Later Hammond, who was foreign secretary under David Cameron between 2014 and 2016, gave evidence to the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee, which is investigating the “handling of state level hostage situations.”
Hammond said one of the problems was that Iran, like many nations, did not recognise the concept of dual nationality and he said their attitude to cases such as Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s was often that it was “none of your business.”
He said another issue was that “the government of Iran is not a single united entity as it is here” and he said there was often tension between hawks and doves within the Tehran regime.
Hammond, who returned to the backbenches in July 2019 and left Parliament altogether later that year, said the British Foreign Office had “cordial and pragmatic relations” with Iran’s ministry of foreign affairs but added, “We knew that the fate of the detainees was ... likely to be determined by the IRGC.”
“The IRGC used their control of detainees as a tool to prevent compromises that they did not approve of,” he added.
Hammond was asked at one point about whether a high-profile publicity campaign, such as Zaghari-Ratcliffe had, was beneficial or counter-productive.
He said Iran was a “paranoid regime” and he added: “From the Iranians’ point of view they had arrested an Iranian national. The British government weighing in at a high level ran the risk of alerting them that there was some connection between Nazanin and the British government or that she was doing something untoward, which of course there was no evidence of at all.”
Zaghari-Ratcliffe told BBC Radio 4’s “Woman’s Hour” on Monday she was taken to the airport by the Revolutionary Guards and was made to sign a forced confession in the presence of a British government official.
Iranian officials told her Britain had settled a historic £400 million ($503 million) debt dating to the 1970s. The UK government accepted it should pay the “legitimate debt” for an order of 1,500 Chieftain tanks, which was not fulfilled after the shah was deposed and replaced by the Islamic regime.
Hammond explained to the Foreign Affairs Committee how difficult the debt issue was to resolve.
He said the government had overcome the “morality” of paying the debt but had to overcome the “legality” of paying it because of international sanctions on Iran, and the “practicality” of paying it, considering that no UK bank wanted to be involved.
