A British-Iranian woman detained in Iran has had her latest trial date postponed – bringing hope to her family.
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, imprisoned by the Iranian authorities on charges of spying while visiting her family in April 2016, had been due to appear in court on Sunday on fresh charges that could have added 16 years to her five-year sentence.
News of her court appearance being postponed came after foreign secretary Boris Johnson concluded a two-day visit to Iran where he met with the country's president Hassan Rouhani, as well as his opposite number Mohammed Javad Zarif. A Foreign Office spokesperson said Johnson and Rouhani spoke "forthrightly" on a number of issues.
Speaking to her husband Richard Ratcliffe on Saturday night, Zaghari-Ratcliffe confirmed she had not been called to court again, and said: "I can see some light today, more than before. Having no court suddenly. It feels like God is protecting me."
Ratcliffe said he believed Johnson's visit, which was arranged independently of Zaghari-Ratcliffe's detention, had made a difference to his wife's case.
She said that other prisoners believed that she may be about to go free, and were making her gifts to celebrate, he said. But she told Ratcliffe: "Freedom is too precious to think about things.”
Speaking to BuzzFeed News, Ratcliffe said the postponement of the case was "definitely a good thing", and, in a statement, said this weekend's news brought "our first ripple of freedom".
He has not seen either his wife or his now-3-year-old daughter, Gabriella, in 20 months. But today, he said, was a "good day".
"My hope is that the ripple in the days ahead might become a full change of tide. My hope today is as Nazanin once wrote: 'Freedom feels one day closer, that Christmas dream remains'."
The new charges of spreading propaganda were brought after Johnson said she was "training journalists" earlier this year. The foreign secretary subsequently apologised for the remarks. Her family has maintained she is innocent of all charges.
"A month ago I was cursing the foreign secretary," Ratcliffe said. He continued that since then, Johnson had promised that he "would do his best" for Zaghari-Ratcliffe, and "to date he has been as good as his word. He did get to Iran, he did get there before her court case, and that did make a difference.
"Of course, one swallow doesn’t make a Christmas – Nazanin is not yet on a plane. But it is good to have at least a swallow in the sky."
Summing up the foreign secretary's visit, a Foreign Office spokesperson said: "We leave with a sense that both sides want to keep up the momentum to resolve the difficult issues in the bilateral relationship and preserve the nuclear deal."