Iran Frees Spy Zaghari After Ending Five-Year Prison Term

“Nazanin Zaghari was freed after the termination of her jail term and her ankle monitor was removed,” Hojjat Kermani said on Sunday.

“Today (Sunday) the five-year [prison] sentence of Ms. Zaghari was finished and her ankle tracer was removed,” Kermani noted, adding that his client was to attend another court hearing in a separate case involving propaganda against the Islamic Republic.

“The hearing is scheduled later this month,” he went on to say.

Nazanin Zaghari was pardoned by Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei last year, but spent the final year of her term under house arrest.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a project manager with the Thomson Reuters Foundation, was arrested in Tehran in April 2016 as she was returning to Britain.

In relevant remarks in late January, Iran’s Judiciary Spokesman Gholam Hossein Esmayeeli rapped British Foreign Secretary Dominique Robb for interfering remarks about the case of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe.

“Nazanin Zaghari is our current convict and she is serving her sentence, and she is yet to stand trial for another charge in her case that has been sent to the court with an indictment. The court has not yet ruled on the new case,” Esmayeeli told reporters in Tehran on Tuesday January 26.

He lambasted Robb for his interfering remarks about Zaghari’s case, saying, “It is against diplomatic norms to comment on our judicial cases.”

While the British media claimed that she was arrested after a family visit and not on any mission, former British Foreign Secretary and current Prime Minister Boris Johnson disclosed in remarks to a parliamentary committee that Zaghari-Ratcliffe was "simply teaching people journalism as I understand it" when she was arrested at Tehran airport.

Robb had earlier said that “we have intensified those negotiations and are leaving no stone unturned, and I want to get Nazanin released, absolutely as soon as possible".