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Family members of British nationals who are currently or have previously been detained abroad are calling on ministers to develop a ‘clear and consistent’ strategy that supports British nationals who are unfairly detained abroad.
A new campaign from Amnesty International outlines the “many failings” from successive UK governments in securing the release of arbitrarily detained prisoners.
Hong Kong journalist Jimmy Lai waited three years for the UK Government to publicly call for his release while being kept in solitary confinement with no access to light (he remains imprisoned by the Chinese state).
British-Iranian labour activist Mehran Raoof had to wait for four and a half years whilst suffering health problems in jail.
And Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe saw then-PM Boris Johnson incorrectly claim she was teaching journalism at the time of her arrest, which her family say jeopardised efforts to secure her release from Iran.
Meanwhile, Laila Soueif went on hunger strike for 149 days before being hospitalised to raise awareness of her son’s plight. She remains on an extremely calorie-restricted diet in hospital in protest over her British-Egyptian son Alaa Abdel-Fattah’s continued imprisonment in Egypt.
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Now a new campaign video from Amnesty features these figures or their family members and friends, including Zaghari-Ratcliffe, Leila Soueif (Alaa’s mother), Sebastien Lai (Jimmy Lai’s son) and others, all calling for a proper strategy and process for handling unfair detentions of Brits overseas.
Labour’s 2024 manifesto saw the party commit to better support for British nationals abroad and especially those whose human rights are being violated, which Amnesty says was “important and welcome.”
However, the campaign group says the problem of British nationals being detained arbitrarily is significant and appears to be growing. “It is important that the government urgently develops a clear strategy for how it will support those caught in this terrible predicament,” Deshmukh adds.
Backing the campaign, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe said: “I was never visited by any of the UK government or embassy staff, and it took eighteen months for them to even call for my release.
“The turmoil that my child has gone through is one of the things that I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forgive. What I would like to say to the UK Government is, when a person is arrested, that person’s life matters.”
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Richard Ratcliffe: Families Face ‘Suppression and Isolation’
Richard Ratcliffe, husband of Nazanin, who campaigned for her release from Iran, tells Byline Times in an interview: “The first thing they need to do is to recognise the problem. At the moment, the Government doesn’t acknowledge anyone detained overseas as being arbitrarily detained or hostage.”
The US has a mechanism whereby they’ll check and decide if someone is unfairly detained, and they call them “wrongfully detained”.
Ratcliffe says: “There’s a door you can knock on to say, ‘Listen, I’m unfairly imprisoned, and I want my Government’s help’ The UK doesn’t do that.”
Successive Conservative Governments buried the problem, he adds. Evidence that then-Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond gave to the Parliament inquiry on Nazanin’s case showed the Government to be “quite proudly agnostic” on unfair detentions abroad, Ratcliffe says, with Hammond suggesting it was not the Government’s business to know whether someone should be imprisoned.
Ratcliffe believes UK Governments want to keep unfair detentions abroad under wraps, to handle them behind the scenes or hope the problems go away.
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“I can’t think of another area of injustice where your policy would be to suppress the injustice. You wouldn’t dare try this approach with sexual assault: ‘No, just keep quiet. That’s the best.’ But it seems okay for torture and hostage-taking…It exposes people to more danger.”
His call for a clear process to kick in when Brits are unfairly detained abroad would avoid what happened to Nazanin, Radcliffe believes. “We had five foreign secretaries on our watch with Nazanin, and there was a reset every time the Foreign Secretary changed. Whatever promises had been made, if they hadn’t been in writing, they hadn’t been made, and we had to rebuild the understanding again each time.”
The family’s highly-publicised campaign was successful, with Iran releasing Nazanin and fellow British-Iranian prisoner Anoosheh Ashoori in March 2022, after a long-standing debt had been paid by the Government to Iran.
“The reality is, we had a level of profile and access, which meant we got to keep knocking on the same doors and breaking them down…
“There are plenty of people you’ve never heard of [being ignored], and I find that unfair.
“Those with the least ability to get in front of a minister are the ones that suffer the most, because it’s a discretionary policy. If you can’t reach the Government, you’re left behind,” tells this newspaper.
Around 100 Brits a year are believed to report state torture or mistreatment abroad to the Foreign Office. There may be a similar number unfairly detained overseas at any one time.
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The problem may only grow as Russia and China seek to exert their global influence. “Russia certainly does take people for leverage. Iran does, North Korea does, China does, and Türkiye certainly is taking Europeans [now]” – all to use citizens as bargaining chips in negotiations with enemies.
But Richard Ratcliffe is concerned that few lessons have been learned from his family’s case. “The Foreign Office’s response to the [Commons] inquiry did not acknowledge a single mistake and did not accept any of the recommendations.
“You can’t look at our case and say that it was perfect, however you think they should have behaved.”
This institutional defensiveness is like a “herd immunity” policy during a pandemic, he says: “In our case, they managed paperwork, stalled us, waiting for it to sort itself out.” But it did not get sorted without hard work.
Last week saw the Taliban in Afghanistan release US citizen Faye Hall after Donald Trump offered concessions. But an elderly British couple, Peter Reynolds, 79, and his wife Barbie, 75, remain imprisoned, alongside their interpreter Juya. All three were arrested on 1st February and are likely to be bargaining chips in talks with the UK. But their case has received little publicity.
He wants the Government to “keep its promises” over protecting Brits abroad.
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“The way the Government handles these cases is not good enough, in my view, and the problem is growing. You can maintain a policy of denial and cross your fingers for a while, but in the end, if you look at the way the world’s going, I think that’s going to become increasingly untenable,” Ratcliffe argues.
And he says the families of Brits unfairly detained abroad are being told by officials the publicity campaign ‘made it much worse for Nazanin’.
“They play on people’s insecurities. It’s really dark…We were told to “stay away from other families.”
“Those are normally the two lines. Suppression and isolation is the prevailing tactic. I still see that. I don’t think you’d do that with other victim groups.”
Calling for a ‘proper’ legal framework, Sacha Deshmukh, Amnesty International UK’s Chief Executive, added: “Successive governments have failed to take urgent action or even have a coherent strategy for supporting individuals arbitrarily detained abroad…
“[Brits are] continuing to be unjustly detained, losing precious time with their loved ones, subjected to inhumane treatment and experiencing a deterioration in their health.”
The Foreign Office was contacted for comment. You can see the new video here.
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Josiah Mortimer also writes the On the Ground column, exclusive to the print edition of Byline Times.
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