Iranian TV: British-Iranian dual national faces new charge

The report did not elaborate beyond saying that Zaghari-Ratcliffe has appeared before a branch of the country's Revolutionary Court in Tehran, where she was first sentenced in 2017.

Iran's state TV, citing an unnamed official, announced on Tuesday that British-Iranian dual national Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is facing a new charge. The report did not elaborate beyond saying that Zaghari-Ratcliffe has appeared before a branch of the country's Revolutionary Court in Tehran, where she was first sentenced in 2017. It said she appeared in court on Tuesday morning.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe had been released from prison due to the coronavirus pandemic after serving nearly all of her five-year sentence. Zaghari-Ratcliffe was arrested during a holiday with her toddler daughter in April 2016. Her family says she was in Iran to visit family, denying that she was plotting against Iran. She was accused of plotting the “soft toppling” of Iran's government. Zaghari-Ratcliffe worked for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of the news agency.

The new charges come after Zaghari-Ratcliffe family's linked her detention to Iran's negotiations with the British government over 400 million pounds settlement (USD 530 million) held by London, a payment the late Iranian Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi made for Chieftain tanks that were never delivered. Tehran has denied that her detention was linked to the negotiations. The new charges could be an attempt to gain new leverage in the negotiations. Iran has been hit hard by the virus early this year, becoming the worst-affected country in the Middle East. Since then, it has reported more than 391,000 cases and 22,542 deaths.