Iran ‘advises’ UK government not to ‘politicise’ Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe case

Iran ‘advises’ UK government not to ‘politicise’ Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe case

Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe completed a five-year sentence earlier this month in Tehran on spying charges levied by Iranian authorities, the last year of which was spent under house arrest.But on Sunday she returned to court to be tried on new charges of “propaganda against the system” – with a verdict on the new charge expected within the next week.“The best thing to help cases such as these is to avoid politicising them,” the Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh told a news conference on Monday.He added: “I advise the British government to allow this case to go through its judicial process.”On Sunday foreign secretary Dominic Raab condemned the decision to pursue a second case against Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe – accusing the Iranian government of putting her “through a cruel and disgraceful ordeal”.Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe, arrested in April 2016, is a project manager with the Thomson Reuters Foundation, a charity that operates independently of media firm Thomson Reuters and its news subsidiary Reuters.Antonio Zappulla, chief executive of the Thomson Reuters Foundation, said the second trial was a deliberate move to prolong her ordeal and her suffering.Having served out most of her five-year sentence in Tehran's Evin prison, Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe was released last March and