A six-year ordeal for the British-Iranian prisoners Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori has finally ended after they were released by Iran and freed to return home to be reunited with their families.
The pair touched down at RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire just after 01:00 GMT on Thursday. Their release came after months of negotiations between the British and Iranian governments.
“I am very pleased to confirm that the unfair detention of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori in Iran has ended today, and they will now return to the UK,” Prime Minister Boris Johnson said earlier on Twitter.
A picture taken inside the airport and posted to Twitter by Mr Ashoori's daughter, Elika Ashoori, showed both returnees standing in a group with their relatives.
The caption read: "Happiness in one pic."
News of the two detainees’ release, the subject of months-long behind-the-scenes diplomacy and payment of a £400m debt, was formally announced by the foreign secretary, Liz Truss.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe, 43, and Ashoori, 67, were released from the control of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps just before noon UK time at Tehran international airport before being flown to Oman and then on to an RAF base, where they are to be greeted by their relatives and Truss.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe was arrested in 2016 in Tehran after working as a charity project manager. Ashoori, a retired civil engineer, was in prison for almost five years, while Tahbaz has been held for four. All three denied charges of spying.
Speaking in the House of Commons on Wednesday, Truss said their release was “the result of years of tenacious British diplomacy”. The UK finally struck the deal after the paying a decades-old debt via a Swiss humanitarian channel. Britain says it has guarantees that the money will be used only for food and medical purposes.
The UK is understood to have agreed to pay £393.8m owed to Iran after it cancelled an order of Chieftain tanks following the overthrow of the Shah in the revolution of 1979. The details of the deal were hammered out in secret talks in February largely in Oman between a British Foreign Office team and the Iranians. With trust between the two countries at a low point, every aspect of the deal, including its choreography, had to be agreed.
