Report: UK Paid Iran $530m in Ransom for the Release of Charity Worker Zaghari-Ratcliffe
UK SkyNews: “The exact details of the agreement are being kept confidential.”
The British government reportedly paid $530 million for the release of a charity worker languishing in Iranian prison for six years.
London claims that the payment of more than half a billion dollars was a settlement of an old debt and the money will be used by Iran for “humanitarian” work.
“We have paid £393.8 million, which will only be used for humanitarian purposes,” UK Foreign secretary Liz Truss admitted. “The terms between the two sides are confidential,” she revealingly added.
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was arrest at the Tehran airport in 2016 as she was returning to the UK after a family visit. Zaghari-Ratcliffe, mother of a seven-year old girl, was convicted of “plotting the overthrow” of the Iranian regime.
While Prime Minister Johnson’s government claims that the payment was a settlement of an old debt related to military supplies for the Shah monarchy, which was overthrown by the Mullahs 40 years ago, the family of the captive maintains that she was released in return for the huge payment. “Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s husband has been outspoken in arguing that Iran was holding her hostage to force Britain to pay,” The Associated Press reported.
The British newspaper Independent reported the details of the payment to Iran:
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was released by Iran after the UK paid a £400m debt to Tehran, Iranian state media has reported.
Iran’s English language broadcaster Press TV announced Britain had “settled a long-overdue debt of $530million to Tehran”.
Fars news agency also said that Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe had paid Iran the $530million sum “before her release.”
The UK government confirmed on Wednesday that they had made a payment of £393.8million in settlement of the 40-year-old debt. The debt was for Chieftain tanks bought by the former Shah of Iran but never delivered after the 1979 Islamic Revolution that removed him from power.
This is not the first time Iran has taken ransom for releasing Western prisoners. In 2016, President Barack Obama’s administration admitted paying $400 million in cash for a similar prisoner release. It is worth noting that taking ransom for captives is allowed under the Sharia, the Islamic law followed by the Iranian regime.
Former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the architect of the policy of “Maximum Pressure” on Iran during President Donald Trump’s presidency, blasted PM Johnson’s government for paying “blood money” to Iran, the world’s biggest state sponsor of terrorism.
The UK priced taking & holding its citizens hostage at $530 million. We prevented paying blood money— not rewarding hostage-takers. That cash will terrorize Israel, UK & US. Sadly, Iran, w/Russia & China, is rolling the West. Appeasement feels good until it fails— it always does. https://t.co/0VcGfgQSD7
— Mike Pompeo (@mikepompeo) March 16, 2022
Since President Joe Biden took office last January, he has been dismantling former President Trump’s policy of maximum pressure and replacing it with a policy of appeasement. In hopes of resorting the 2015 nuclear deal, President Biden has lifted a series of sanctions on Iran, including an international weapon’s embargo and sanctions on regime’s ‘civilian’ nuclear program.
The White House is also reportedly considering removing of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) from the list of foreign terrorist organizations. The Biden White House has also given “written guarantees” to Russia allowing the country to freely trade with Iran, bypassing sanctions imposed in wake of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov disclosed on Tuesday.
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Comments
Humanitarian work in Muslim delusionland is offering a dating service to set up horny terrorists with afterlife virgins.
We will all rue the day this ransom was paid. The 500m could have gone to war material to the Iranian underground.
History always repeats itself: and it IS ALWAYS THE LIBERALS WHO REPEAT IT!
Is there a typo in the title?.. not being nit picky.. Can you edit and delete this comment, please?
Not being nit picky at all…… the web is forever.
So, $500 mill goes into “charity” and 500 mill that was scheduled for “charity” can go for terrorism.
Precisely. The old “state lottery funds schools” ploy.
“We have paid £393.8 million, which will only be used for humanitarian purposes,” UK Foreign secretary Liz Truss admitted.”
Money is fungible, you silly bint.
Yeah how about no. If you go to a Nation that is and has been a known sponsor of terrorism that’s on you and I don’t have a great deal of sympathy for you. Stop paying off kidnappers it only encourages more of the same.
having been arrested during a holiday visit to show her baby daughter Gabriella to her parents. It was New Year festivities.
kyrrat,
We all make choices in life. The ability to properly evaluate risk and the acceptance of consequences which flow from our choices are a pretty good definition of adulthood. Iran has held and is now holding people hostage who have for many reasons traveled to Iran. That’s not a secret. This individual made an extremely poor choice despite having that information.
For you to seek to somehow mitigate her foolish choice is a juvenile and emotional response. Adults not only take responsibility for our own mistakes but hold others accountable for their mistakes. The reason she chose to voluntarily travel to a terrorist State with a history of detaining, holding, kidnapping those with Western Passports or residing in Western Nations is immaterial.
Yeah, how about LI just take down this whole article given its utter lack of grounding in reality.
Iran paid the UK for tanks, then deposed the Iranian leadership in a coup. The UK rightly said “We’re not giving you violent religious extremists our tanks” and refused to deliver. Iran took the UK to court for breach of contract, and won.
The money is not a ransom. It’s the return of a prepayment for military hardware that was never delivered.
I’m very disappointed in the Legal Insurrection reporting on this.
530 million… dang, that will encourage them to stop
$530m? Charity worker cum spy?
having been arrested during a holiday visit to show her baby daughter Gabriella to her parents.
That’s what Skype and Zoom are for.
You assume her elderly parents in Iran have computer equipment and a connection to the internet. And that even if she sent the things necessary that Iran would allow her parents to have them.
Well, maybe you get the money together, like a couple of million of the 530 million, amd get them smuggled out of Iran?
Did they also take her Kodachrome away?
The taking and ransoming of hostages is a classic Islamic tactic of war. Muhammad did it to fund himself and his burgeoning religion, and many pages on the subject have been written by Islamic scholars.
Who would have ever agreed to 530 million should be shot
So the Turkish Johnson just set the Islamic ransom rate at a half billion per hostage? He’s an educated man. He knows that this is how his Ottoman fore-bearers funded their jihad and their state.
Stupid UK followed stupid U.S. in electing an Islamophilic chief executive. Ours is now in his third term, and is destroying our great country as fast as he possibly can.
Why is he trying to start a nuclear war with Russia? See Muhammad’s first instruction to Muslims living in non-Muslim countries: that they should pretend to be non-Muslim and “turn them against each other,” when they are in a position to do so, “because war is deception.”
And how much will they be paying for the next hostage? Because what they have done is create a whole new cottage industry by paying the hostage takers off.