Iran: British-Iranian woman accused of attempting to 'overthrow the regime'

A British-Iranian woman has been accused of being a foreign agent and plotting the overthrow of the Iranian government after being arrested in the Islamic Republic in April 2016. According to a statement released by Iran's revolutionary guards, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, 37, had been arrested during "massive intelligence operations" which had identified her as a senior foreign spy.

Iranian-born Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who has a British husband and British daughter, was also said by the guards to be "involved in the soft overthrow of the Islamic Republic through... her membership in foreign companies and institutions," the Middle East Eye reported.

She was said by the Iranian officials to have conducted "various missions... leading her criminal activities under the direction of media and intelligence services of foreign governments."

However, Zaghari-Ratcliffe's family have protested her innocence. The Thompson Reuters' Foundation Manager, who is not a journalist, visited Iran three times since 2011. She is now detained in Iran with her two-year-old daughter, who is also unable to return home because her British passport has been confiscated.

Nazanin's husband Richard Ratcliffe has set up a Change.org petition to campaign for her release, and has said she was forced to sign a confession under duress. The website for the campaign also explains that Zaghari-Ratcliffe has been held in solitary confinement for at least 30 days.

"It is hard to understand how a young mother and her small child on holiday could be considered an issue of national security. She has been to Iran to visit her family regularly since making Britain her home," Richard Ratcliffe writes on the site.

The petition calling for the British Prime Minister David Cameron to intervene in the matter had 764,299 supporters at the time of writing.