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LONDON — A British cultural group mentioned on Wednesday that considered one of its workers from Iran had been acquitted of espionage prices by that nation’s Supreme Courtroom and was again in Britain after spending greater than three years in jail.
Whereas visiting her grandmother in Iran, the girl, Aras Amiri, was arrested in March 2018 together with different Iranians with British connections, in what was considered an try by the authorities to realize leverage in an outdated dispute with Britain over greater than $400 million in undelivered weaponry.
Ms. Amiri, an artwork pupil employed for 5 years by the British Council to facilitate “higher appreciation of Iranian tradition within the U.Okay.,” is an Iranian citizen who had lived in Britain for round 10 years earlier than she was detained. Iran’s Supreme Courtroom acquitted her in August, the council mentioned, and she or he returned to Britain this week after the journey ban related together with her authentic detention was lifted.
Ms. Amiri’s acquittal underscores the Iranian authorities’ frequent focusing on of twin residents and Iranian residents with Western connections, usually utilizing their circumstances as diplomatic bargaining chips or to press for the discharge of Iranian prisoners overseas.
She was sentenced to 10 years in jail in April 2019, a punishment that was delivered on state-funded Iranian TV earlier than both she or her lawyer had been knowledgeable, in keeping with a letter Ms. Amiri wrote in June 2019 from jail, which her cousin, Mohsen Omrani, despatched to the Heart for Human Rights in Iran, a New York-based advocacy group.
In line with the identical letter addressed to Iranian judiciary chief, Ebrahim Raisi, Ms. Amiri mentioned that she had been imprisoned due to her affiliation with the British Council and that she had turned down an “specific invitation” to spy for Iran’s Intelligence Ministry.
“We now have at all times refuted the unique prices made in opposition to Aras,” the council mentioned in a press release on Wednesday. “We’re very happy with her work in our London workplace as an arts program officer.”
In an interview with The Related Press, Ms. Amiri’s lawyer, Hojjat Kermani, mentioned that Iran’s Supreme Courtroom had decided that her earlier espionage conviction was “in opposition to Shariah,” in any other case referred to as Islamic regulation.
Different twin residents and Iranian residents with Western connections who’ve been detained embody Kylie Moore-Gilbert, a British-Australian scholar who was detained in 2018 on prices of spying for Israel, and was launched in December in a prisoner swap with three Iranian males.
Ms. Amiri was incarcerated in Evin Jail, north of Tehran. Earlier than her acquittal and return to Britain, Ms. Amiri was briefly launched on furlough in April 2020 over considerations in regards to the unfold of coronavirus.
Additionally incarcerated in Evin Jail was one other British-Iranian nationwide, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe.
In April 2020, Ms. Zaghari-Ratcliffe — a undertaking supervisor with the Thomson Reuters Basis on the time of her arrest, who was sentenced to 5 years in jail in 2016 after she was accused of plotting to overthrow the federal government in Tehran — was additionally granted indefinite furlough. (Ms. Zaghari-Ratcliffe was given a one-year sentence and journey ban in April, below new prices of conducting “propaganda actions” in opposition to the Iranian authorities.
A number of international and twin nationals are held in Iranian prisons, together with Nahid Taghavi, a German-Iranian architect; Siamak Namazi, a businessman, and his father, Baquer Namazi, a former official with Unicef, each Iranian People; Dr. Ahmad Reza Jalali, a Swedish-Iranian doctor and researcher; and Morad Tahbaz, an Iranian-American environmentalist.
Farnaz Fassihi contributed reporting.
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