Zaghari-Ratcliffe condemns Iran’s ‘cruel’ rearrest of wildlife activist couple

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was in prison with Sepideh Kashani, who worked with husband Houman Jokar to save Asiatic cheetah

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has described the rearrest of two Iranian environmentalists, one of whom she met at Evin prison, as “unimaginably cruel and alarming”.

Husband and wife Houman Jokar and Sepideh Kashani were arrested by the ministry of intelligence at their home on 1 July. No reason has been given and their whereabouts are unknown.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who has dual Iranian and British citizenship and spent six years in an Iranian jail between 2016 and 2022, said Kashani was not a political person and that she could not imagine how she must be feeling, given the environmentalist had previously spent two years in solitary confinement. “It must be a different level of torture,” Zaghari-Ratcliffe said.

Kashani and Jokar worked for the now defunct Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation, dedicated to saving the Iranian cheetah from extinction. They were among a group of environmentalists arrested in 2018 and jailed on charges of using wildlife camera traps to spy on Iran. The convictions were widely condemned as baseless by the international scientific community. Even the head of Iran’s environment ministry and the then minister of intelligence said several times that the environmentalists were not spies and that they had not done anything wrong.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe said Kashani’s sister Sima was also arrested on 1 July, and all the couple’s electronic devices were taken. The news was broken by Hojjat Kermani, their defence lawyer, who also worked on the Zaghari-Ratcliffe case. The arrests were confirmed by Iran’s ministry of intelligence.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe said: “Jokar had dedicated his entire life to looking after the critically endangered Asiatic cheetahs in Iran. He has an amazing knowledge of their life, their wellbeing and their habitats. Whilst he was in prison the officially approved wildlife channel showed his programmes. He could watch himself in prison. It was so bizarre. He is so knowledgable and the most polite prisoner.

“Sepideh,” she added, “is a wonderful person. After completing her sentence – some others were pardoned – she never left Iran, but she was not allowed to return to her work so they were eating into their savings and could not afford to go to the seaside for her holidays. They were not politically active or on social media, and had stayed in Iran for family reasons.

“All we know of them is that they have been allowed to make two phone calls, and we do not know if the arrests are related to the previous case. I can only hope the two sisters are together.”

Zaghari-Ratcliffe said her own biggest nightmare involved being rearrested. “Can you imagine being sent back to the cell in which you spent two years in solitary confinement, and knowing that they are capable of keeping people for six years for doing nothing? They have the power to do that.

“What is so shocking is that she has been through this whole nightmare once, and knows what she may be facing. She went through solitary confinement for two years. Solitary confinement is just a different level of torture.

“She was extraordinary when she came on the ward because we felt after two years in solitary she would be psychologically traumatised. But she is such a kind, generous and hilarious person, always helping those in prison that did not have enough money to buy something to eat. She is the kind of person to say: ‘That is enough mourning and crying. I am craving pesto pasta.’”

The latest arrests are just a sliver of a severe crackdown on Iranian civil society and dissidents. More than 6,000 people have been detained since the launch of the US-Israel war on Iran, according to Amnesty International.

Siamak Namazi, an Iranian-American man who was imprisoned in Iran for eight years and was cellmates with Jokar, said in a social media post: “The Islamic Republic speaks of the need for ‘national reconciliation’. Explain how dragging away two of Iran’s finest people, along with a woman with MS who was caring for her recovering father, without charges, without transparency, and without due process is reconciliation.”

He said the original convictions were one of Iran’s “most notorious miscarriages of justice.”