A British-Iranian woman detained for months in Iran on suspicion of planning the "soft toppling" of the government while traveling with her young daughter has been sentenced to five years in prison, her husband said on September 9.
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was convicted on "secret charges," Richard Ratcliffe said, making her the first dual national known to be convicted as part of a string of detentions this year.
"A sentence with secret charges still seems crazy. Literally, it is a punishment without a crime," Ratcliffe said.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe works for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of the news agency. She was sentenced on September 6 by Judge Abolghassem Salavati in Tehran's Revolutionary Court, a judge known for his tough sentences, her husband said.
She was detained in April while trying to fly out of the country with her toddler daughter, Gabriella, who remains in Iran with grandparents.
Iran's powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps has said Zaghari-Ratcliffe participated in the "design and implementation of cyber and media projects to cause the soft toppling of the Islamic republic," without elaborating.
