TEHRAN: An Iranian Revolutionary court has sentenced Iranian-British aid worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe to five years in prison on charges that remain secret, her family said on Friday.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe was detained in early April as she tried to leave Iran after a visit with her two-year-old daughter.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have accused her of trying to overthrow Iran’s clerical establishment. The official charges against her have not been made public and the Iranian authorities were not immediately available for comment.
“On Sept. 6 Nazanin was sentenced to five years imprisonment by Judge Salavati of the Revolutionary Court,” her family said in a statement.“Nazanin confirmed this sentence to her husband in a phone call today (Sept. 9). She is expected to serve her sentence in Evin prison,” the statement added.
Her husband Richard Ratcliffe said in the family’s statement: “A sentence with secret charges still seems crazy. Literally it is a punishment without a crime.”
Zaghari-Ratcliffe works for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, a London-based charity that is independent of Thomson Reuters and operates independently of Reuters News. The Foundation and her husband have dismissed the Revolutionary Guards’ accusation. The 37-year-old, who appeared in court for the first time in August, according to Iranian media and her family, was arrested at Tehran’s Imam Khomeini International Airport as she tried to leave Iran after visiting her parents.
She was separated from her two-year-old daughter, Gabriella, who has remained in the care of her grandparents.
UK-Iranian mother jailed on ‘secret charges’ for 5 years
UK-Iranian mother jailed on ‘secret charges’ for 5 years
Family of Palestinian-American shot dead by Israeli settler demand accountability
- Relatives say Abu Siyam was among about 30 residents from the village of Mukhmas who confronted armed settlers attempting to steal goats from the community
LONDON: The family of a 19-year-old Palestinian-American man reportedly shot dead by an Israeli settler in the occupied West Bank have demanded accountability, amid mounting scrutiny over a surge in settler violence and a lack of prosecutions.
Nasrallah Abu Siyam, a US citizen born in Philadelphia, was killed near the city of Ramallah on Wednesday, becoming at least the sixth American citizen to die in incidents involving Israeli settlers or soldiers in the territory in the past two years.
Relatives say Abu Siyam was among about 30 residents from the village of Mukhmas who confronted armed settlers attempting to steal goats from the community. Witnesses said that stones were thrown by both sides before settlers opened fire, wounding at least three villagers.
Abu Siyam was struck and later died of his injuries.
Abdulhamid Siyam, the victim’s cousin, said the killing reflected a wider pattern of impunity.
“A young man of 19 shot and killed in cold blood, and no responsibility,” he told the BBC. “Impunity completely.”
The US State Department said that it was aware of the death of a US citizen and was “carefully monitoring the situation,” while the Trump administration said that it stood ready to provide consular assistance.
The Israeli embassy in Washington said the incident was under review and that an operational inquiry “must be completed as soon as possible.”
A spokesperson for the Israeli Defense Forces said troops were deployed to the scene and used “riot dispersal means to restore order,” adding that no IDF gunfire was reported.
The military confirmed that the incident remained under review and said that a continued presence would be maintained in the area to prevent further unrest.
Palestinians and human rights organizations say such reviews rarely lead to criminal accountability, arguing that Israeli authorities routinely fail to prosecute settlers accused of violence.
A US embassy spokesperson later said that Washington “condemns this violence,” as international concern continues to grow over conditions in the occupied West Bank.
Palestinians and human rights groups say Israeli authorities routinely fail to investigate or prosecute settlers accused of violence against civilians.
Those concerns were echoed this week by the UN, which warned that Israel’s actions in the occupied West Bank may amount to ethnic cleansing.
A UN human rights office report on Thursday said that Israeli settlement expansion, settler attacks and military operations have increasingly displaced Palestinian communities, with dozens of villages reportedly emptied since the start of the Gaza war.
The report also criticized Israeli military tactics in the northern West Bank, saying that they resembled warfare and led to mass displacement, while noting abuses by Palestinian security forces, including the use of unnecessary lethal force and the intimidation of critics.
Neither Israel’s foreign ministry nor the Palestinian Authority has commented on the findings.
