LONDON: Richard Ratcliffe said he is “definitely looking rougher and feeling rougher” after more than two weeks of a hunger strike aimed at pressuring the British government to do more to bring his wife home from detention in Iran.
He told TV program “Good Morning Britain” that he may end his hunger strike when the Iranian delegation leaves the COP26 Summit in Glasgow.
As of Monday, the father-of-one has been on a hunger strike for 16 days in a bid to pressure London to do more to bring his wife Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe home.
She has been detained in Iran for over five years after being arrested in 2016 and accused of plotting to overthrow the regime. She has always vehemently denied the accusation.
Ratcliffe said: “I don’t feel hungry but I do feel the cold more. It’s a short-term tactic. You can’t take it too long or you end up in a coma.”
Asked when he will end his strike, he said: “At this point, I will have to start listening to my body. Over the weekend I spent most of the day sitting down. The batteries were really flat.
“One of the things with a hunger strike is you get more stubborn the longer things go on, so you become less able to flexibly let go.”
He told Sky News that London must take a tougher stance toward Iran’s strategy of holding British citizens such as his wife hostage.
“They do need to be tougher with Iran on hostage-taking,” he said. “For example, this week the Iranian vice president is being hosted up in Glasgow and being wined and dined.
“Really it should be challenged, that it is not OK that when UK citizens have been taken hostage that the Iranian state carries on as normal.”
He added: “I don’t think that the government’s approach to hostage-taking is effective. Five and a half years shows that.”
Ratcliffe has at times been joined by families of other Britons detained in Iran, including that of Anoosheh Ashoori, a dual national serving 10 years behind bars.
Families have said Tehran holds their loved ones as bargaining chips as part of its wider geopolitical strategy, and some have speculated that the fate of Zaghari-Ratcliffe and others is now dependent on the outcome of negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program.
