When the British-Iranian woman was arrested in Iran in 2016, it wasn’t immediately obvious what had happened – but within 100 days, the basic story became known. Richard Ratcliffe, her spouse, organized a media briefing. He collected 780,000 names on a campaign for her release, and sent a message demanding the her release from the then PM David Cameron. This came to light later, followed private meetings with the UK foreign ministry in which government staff maintained that the safest approach, for the sake of Nazanin’s return and the well-being of her parents and brother in Iran, was to keep quiet and let diplomacy work.
“It was state hostage-taking,” notes Joseph Fiennes, who portrays Richard Ratcliffe in the BBC television drama the series Prisoner 951. “It clearly goes on, and innocent people and families are completely disrupted and tarred for life. And now I’ve told this story, I regard anyone that might be accused with wrongdoing, and I am skeptical.”
In July 2016, it was clear that a grave injustice had occurred. A dual national, Nazanin was kept in detention on espionage allegations, away from her young child. She was accused of attempting to overthrow the Iranian regime, of working for MI6, “empowering women” (in a questioning session) and engaging in illicit earnings. It sounded fanciful. She worked for the news agency Reuters – though not in its journalism division, rather its charitable foundation – and she had legitimate business in Iran, traveling with her daughter to visit her parents.
If the charge sheet appeared questionable to an unschooled audience, it rang louder alarm bells still in the Iranian community abroad, as Narges Rashidi, who plays Nazanin and was born in Khorramabad in Iran (emigrating to Germany when she was seven) attests. “It was widely understood that there was no validity to the false pretexts they said she was being held.”
Yet Britain was newly post-Brexit, and the day after the appeal reached Cameron, Theresa May became as prime minister. The news agenda only had eyes for governmental upheaval, and Johnson was appointed foreign secretary, leading to disastrous outcomes. Perhaps the greatest notice the couple obtained then was when Johnson uttered his inaccurate statements the next year, that she’d been “teaching people journalism, as I understand it”, which was false and strengthened the Iran’s government’s trumped up allegations, further endangering her.
For all the information and sporadic discussion, which Ratcliffe diligently fought to maintain while Nazanin fought to stay resilient, the human reality of this imprisonment is utterly shocking to see dramatized in the series. Rashidi, featured in another drama, sounds so much like Zaghari-Ratcliffe it’s astonishing. She attributes this to her accent instructor: her natural speech pattern is mid-Atlantic and she lives in LA.
Rashidi watched everything: discussions with Zaghari-Ratcliffe, and the heartstopping but understated reunion with her daughter. Additionally, surprising footage available: somehow the occasion of Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s arrest at the airport has made it online. “A short video segment; she wasn’t aware that she was being filmed.”
Within the series, she is walking a fine line, caught between the confidence of her innocence and the uncertainty that, should you be detained over baseless claims, where does it lead? Looking back, that she would be in incarcerated for six long years, it is profoundly upsetting to see the situation develop in the emotions on her face. Her battle not to respond excessively; her vain effort to oppose the turmoil of arbitrary state power. “In my view,” Rashidi says, “that is a very different Nazanin to the later period. I observed a person completely frightened and very gentle, unaware the events unfolding to her. I encountered her fortitude subsequently, following this entire experience.”
Fiennes “had the privilege of sitting with Richard”, he says. “This isn’t always possible with the individual you portray, and he’s a forensic accountant. The persistence, where you get to the place of ‘Show me the {bloody receipt|actual proof|concrete evidence’, is part of his nature.” It becomes a heartbreaking experience too, as this traditionally minded individual first slowly then rapidly loses his faith in the things he used to trust: experts, officials, the government, other conventional people. “He believed the London administration would have it in hand, but this proved incorrect. He was just lied to, given untruths continuously.”
Ratcliffe dealt with five foreign ministers during the years she was incarcerated: a succession of officials. The couple would always be the last thing on the diplomat’s schedule after they’d settled into the post, and when they reviewed the case, their tenure was up. Within the series, it takes Ratcliffe a while to see that “a defense industry network exists operating here,” Fiennes says, “and it’s not transparent. It works behind official channels, and this is a family that were ensnared by it.”
One scene in which Ratcliffe bursts into the office of Cleverly (he was then the minister of state for the Middle East and North Africa), “and unleashes a tirade. He completely loses composure. His appearance is disheveled. He is engaged in the eighteenth day without food, he is in despair. But it takes a lot for Ratcliffe to reach that stage. {He’s not liberated|He isn
