Europe and the Growing Challenge of Iran’s ‘Hostage Taking'

Asharq Al-Awsat tells the story of four families fighting to bring their loved ones home

Richard Ratcliffe and his daughter Gabriella outside the FCDO, November 5. (AFP)
Richard Ratcliffe and his daughter Gabriella outside the FCDO, November 5. (AFP)
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Europe and the Growing Challenge of Iran’s ‘Hostage Taking'

Richard Ratcliffe and his daughter Gabriella outside the FCDO, November 5. (AFP)
Richard Ratcliffe and his daughter Gabriella outside the FCDO, November 5. (AFP)

Richard Ratcliffe, who has been campaigning to bring his wife home for over five years, ended a three-week hunger strike today.

He spent the last 20 nights in a tent opposite the Foreign Office building in central London, in an attempt to ramp up pressure on the government to secure the release of his wife and other dual-nationals, held in Iran as “bargaining chips”.

Surrounded by #FreeNazanin posters and artwork crafted by his mother and his daughter Gabriella’s class, Ratcliffe looked much thinner and weaker, but no less resolved to continue his campaign to bring his wife home.

He said in a Twitter post: “Today I have promised Nazanin to end the hunger strike. Gabriella needs two parents.”

Zaghari-Ratcliffe was arrested in Tehran in April 2016, as she was returning home to the UK after visiting family with her daughter Gabriella.

She was accused of plotting to overthrow Iran’s government, a charge she categorically denies, and served a five-year sentence which ended earlier this year.

She was not however allowed to go back to the UK, and was sentenced to a further year in prison and a one-year travel ban, on charges of spreading “propaganda against the system”, for having participated in a protest outside the Iranian Embassy in London in 2009.

She appealed the verdict, but the decision was upheld by a court in Tehran last month.

Like Ratcliffe, many families condemn Iran's "hostage taking", and call on their governments to protect dual nationals from being used as "bargaining chips".

Asharq Al-Awsat speaks to four families campaigning to bring their loved ones home.

Two hunger strikes in 3 years

There was growing concern amongst Ratcliffe’s family and supporters about his health, but he was determined to last as long as it was medically safe to do so.

“It felt like either we escalate now, or the Revolutionary Guards do,” Ratcliffe told Asharq Al-Awsat explaining his decision to go on a second hunger strike in three years.

“I asked the Foreign Secretary when I spoke to her (last month) about the consequences (the UK would impose) after Nazanin’s sentence. There were none.”

He noted that “there might be consequences if they put her back in prison, but (for us) that would be too late. This is what triggered this hunger strike.”

He continued: “This is something we can do, we do not have to wait for the government. I am hoping to make the point that I am not going to let this drift, (the government) needs to resolve this.”

Ratcliffe was fully aware of the dangers of going on a hunger strike in near-freezing temperatures, when he made the decision.

“It takes a few days to adjust to sleeping on the streets, it is precarious, it is cold,” he told Asharq Al-Awsat on his second day without food.

Fast forward to day 20, Ratcliffe does not feel hungry anymore, but feels the cold more. “I can feel it in my fingers and toes. I am definitely slower and rougher,” he said.

His last hunger strike, which was in solidarity with his wife, lasted 15 days and resulted in his daughter being returned to the UK.

“This time, it was my decision,” he explained.

Four demands

Ratcliffe presented four demands to Boris Johnson’s government, “three sticks and one carrot”.

The sticks include “being honest that this is a hostage situation, punishing the perpetrators by imposing Magnitsky-style sanctions on them, and working with allies within the JCPOA negotiations to commit Iran to stop taking hostages.”

As for the carrot, Ratcliffe calls on the government to pay a decades-old debt owed to Iran, which he links to his wife’s detention.

“It is unconscionable that the government doesn’t solve that,” he says.

An outstanding debt

Ratcliffe considers that his wife is being used as “leverage” by Iran, with regard to the UK's failure to pay an outstanding £400 million debt to Iran, part of a 1971 arms deal dispute. On the other hand, the UK considers it “unhelpful” to connect wider bilateral issues with those arbitrarily detained in Iran.

The government says that it continues to explore options to resolve this 40-year-old case, and that discussions are ongoing.

Following a meeting with UK Minister for the Middle East and North Africa, James Cleverly, in London earlier this week, Iran’s deputy foreign minister, Ali Bagheri Kani said the size of the payment to Iran, including interest, had been agreed by the two sides, revealing it was less than £500m, according to the Guardian.

London and Tehran seemed close to an agreement last summer, before talks came to a halt.

“We had reasons to be hopeful over the summer, there was quite a lot of negotiations going on. Those have obviously hit a wall and stopped,” Ratcliffe confirms. Dr. Carla Ferstman, a senior Lecturer at the University of Essex School of Law and Human Rights Centre, said that it was “important for the UK government to repay the debt in accordance with court judgments, which have affirmed that the UK has this obligation. The obligation to repay the debt exists irrespective of the hostage situation.”

She adds that while “one would not want to take action that will simply encourage more hostage-taking,” it is “at the same time vital for states to also take into account the humanitarian consequences and the extreme suffering of the persons detained and their families.”

“What is important is for the many states who find themselves in this situation to coordinate their actions to maximize their collective impact.”

A detained father

Like Ratcliffe, Elika Ashoori, daughter of Anoosheh Ashoori, a 66-year-old British-Iranian jailed for spying charges in the notorious Evin prison, connects her father’s case to the outstanding debt.

She and her brother Aryan Ashoori have joined Ratcliffe a few nights in his camping site outside the Foreign Office.

Recalling the story of Ashoori’s arrest, Elika tells Asharq Al-Awsat: “My father went to Iran in the summer of 2017, to visit his mum who was 86 years old at the time. She was going to undergo knee surgery, and he went to nurse her.”

Unsuspecting of his fate, Ashoori was arrested on his way to the shops in August 2017. “A van pulled up, they asked his name, and once he confirmed it, they put a bag over his head and they took him in.”

The retired engineer, who holds British and Iranian passports, was directly taken to Evin prison. He was tried there on charges of spying for the Mossad, and is now serving a 10-year sentence.

“He was in solitary confinement for two and a half months, and was then taken to the general ward, where he has been until this day.”

Elika explains that her family tried to go through an appeals process in Iran to overturn her father’s sentence. “But obviously, it is not a real sentence, nor a real charge. So they have rejected that.”

She adds that “we have since discovered that this is the {basic charge} used by the Iranian government to arrest dual nationals taken as hostages for Tehran’s gains.”

Elika sees a clear link between her father’s imprisonment and the historic outstanding debt that the UK owes Iran since 1979.

“It is not a secret anymore,” she says. “There have been talks between governments, to settle this debt. But we had Covid-19 and Brexit happening in the last couple of years, which contributed to delaying the process.”

She adds: “Both governments have at some point publicly acknowledged the situation as what it is now. There have been deals that were close to being made, but they have fallen through for reasons we are not told.”

Elika believes that her father is “collateral damage” between countries trying to make deals that would benefit them.

Since Ashoori’s arrest, his family and representatives have held multiple meetings with the FCDO, but these have seldom resulted in tangible progress, Elika says.

She explains: “We had meetings with both Jeremy Hunt and Dominic Raab. The nature of these meetings is always similar. They give us an update on ongoing negotiations, and confirm that the dual-national cases are important to them, and that they are doing their best.”

She laments that they have been hearing “the same forms of response for four years."

French tourist facing espionage charges

On the other side of the Channel, a family is breaking their silence after the detention of Benjamin Brière (35 years old), a French national who traveled by himself to Iran, onboard a van.

His sister Blandine Brière stopped receiving updates from him in May 2020, until her and her family discovered that he was arrested not far from the city of Mashhad, where he was visiting a natural park.

He was accused of flying a drone and taking photographs in a “prohibited area”. He has since been charged of espionage and propaganda against the Iranian regime.

Denying the charges, Blandine maintains that her brother, who’s been in prison in the city of Mashhad for over 14 months, was “an ordinary French tourist, who bought a tourist drone from a supermarket”.

She tells Asharq Al-Awsat: “He went traveling in Iran, fell in love with the country and its people. And found himself jailed overnight.”

Benjamin receives regular consular visits, usually once every two months.

“We pleaded time and time again with the French government, and with President (Emmanuel) Macron, to intervene on behalf of Benjamin, but we continue to be in the dark about his case,” laments Blandine.

“We receive no word of progress from the authorities, other than {Benjamin is doing fine, do not worry, he is not mistreated}.”

In terms of communicating directly with Benjamin, Blandine says that throughout the past year, she could only speak to him three times. But over the last few months, “things have improved and I am able to speak to him every two to three weeks over the phone.”

Blandine notes that her brother should have access to a phone call a day, and that he “fights” daily for his right to speak to his family.

That said, Benjamin can still contact the French consul freely. Benjamin is the only foreign prisoner, publicly acknowledged by Iran, not to have dual citizenship. He only holds a French passport.

Faced with silence from the French authorities, Benjamin’s family decided to raise his case public a few months ago, “to try and move things along.”

Blandine explains: “We have been asked to keep quiet about Benjamin’s imprisonment in the beginning, in the hope that his case gets sorted out. However, had we continued with our silence, things would still not have improved. So, we have decided to raise my brother’s case publicly. The situation is obscure; we are deprived of all information.”

Blandine, like the other families fighting to bring their loved ones’ home, believes that he brother could be a “bargaining chip” used by Iran to advance its interests.

She says: “Given that we have no information about the judicial process in Iran, no ruling on Benjamin’s case, this is the only scenario that makes sense. We now just ask our government to do what is necessary to bring him home.”

Blandine adds: “we can now clearly say that Benjamin is hostage of negotiations between countries, and that he serves as leverage”.

A 'hostage' on death row

Vida Mehran-nia’s Swedish-Iranian husband, Ahmadreza Djalali, was arrested by officials from Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence while travelling by car from Tehran to Karaj in April 2016.

Ahmadreza, who works at a medical university in Stockholm, went to Iran after receiving an invitation to attend a workshop on disaster medicine.

“He planned to stay in the country for two weeks and to return to Sweden on 28 April 2016. However, he has still not returned,” his wife tells Asharq Al-Awsat.

“At the time of his arrest, the Iranian officials did not present an arrest warrant, nor did they inform Ahmadreza of the reason for his arrest”.

She continues: “Approximately two weeks later, they claimed that Ahmadreza had collaborated with Israel."

He was later sentenced to death for allegedly passing on classified information to Israel's Mossad intelligence agency.

Ahmadreza and his family vehemently deny the “baseless charges”.

“Until today, not one document of proof or evidence has been presented by Iran's judicial power or the ministry of Intelligence. On the contrary, they have ignored all the undeniable evidence and documents that Ahmadreza and his lawyers provided as proof of his innocence,” maintains his wife.

Vida was denied all contact with her husband for many months.

She says: “It has been almost a year the Evin prison officials have blocked contact between us and Ahmadreza. However, just about four months ago, when his mother passed away, officials unblocked his contact with his family inside Iran. He is still denied contact with us in Sweden."

Ahmadreza’s treatment in Evin prison has been particularly cruel, and “has involved various inhuman” tactics, Vida says.

She continues: “It is enough to refer to a sentence used by UN human rights experts that stated: {There is only word to describe the severe physical and psychological ill-treatment of Djalali, and that is torture}".

Like the families of Nazanin, Anoosheh and Benjamin, Vida believes that her husband is being used as a bargaining chip.

She says: “As we clearly see in international media, it seems that Ahmadreza is being used as a bargaining chip to mount political pressure on the EU, Belgium and Sweden in particular. There are a couple of legal challenges and trials in these countries that outrage the Iranian regime”..

“It is assumed by the media and various entities that Ahmadreza is a hostage,” she concludes.

A worsening phenomenon

Hostage taking is not a new phenomenon, but Dr. Ferstman believes it is fair to say, that the practice “has increased in recent years.”

She explains: “Part of the increased media attention stems from the fact that the families affected are in more contact with each other. This has improved solidarity, but has also increased knowledge about the scale of the problem and heightened media interest.”

As to whether state-sponsored hostage taking usually works, Ferstman says that “it depends what one considers to be the objective. It is rarely just about the immediate trade or concession.”

She continues: “What the practice does do is heighten mistrust, complicate international relations and also (at least in the case of dual-nationals) instill fear in persons living abroad to come back to Iran to visit family or to engage professionally or economically with Iran.”

“This has long-term ramifications on the country and ultimately fosters Iran's isolation.”

Ferstman considers that the UN has an important role.

“The UN human rights machinery - including the UN Special Rapporteur on Iran and the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention have regularly commented on the practice."

She adds: “But equally, given the international dimension of the problem and the targeting of nationals from an array of countries impacting peace and security, both the general assembly and the security council also have an important role to play.”



Numbers That Matter from the First 100 Days of Trump’s Second Term

US President Donald Trump looks on, on the day he welcomes the Super Bowl LIX winner, NFL champion Philadelphia Eagles on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, DC, US, April 28, 2025. (Reuters)
US President Donald Trump looks on, on the day he welcomes the Super Bowl LIX winner, NFL champion Philadelphia Eagles on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, DC, US, April 28, 2025. (Reuters)
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Numbers That Matter from the First 100 Days of Trump’s Second Term

US President Donald Trump looks on, on the day he welcomes the Super Bowl LIX winner, NFL champion Philadelphia Eagles on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, DC, US, April 28, 2025. (Reuters)
US President Donald Trump looks on, on the day he welcomes the Super Bowl LIX winner, NFL champion Philadelphia Eagles on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, DC, US, April 28, 2025. (Reuters)

President Donald Trump's first 100 days back in the White House have been a demolition job — and that's a point of pride for his administration.

For the Republican administration, the raw numbers on executive actions, deportations, reductions in the federal workforce, increased tariff rates and other issues point toward a renewed America. To Trump's critics, though, he's wielding his authority in ways that challenge the Constitution's separation of powers and pose the risk of triggering a recession.

From executive orders to deportations, some defining numbers from Trump’s first 100 days:

Roughly 140 executive orders In just 100 days, Trump has nearly matched the number of executive orders that his predecessor, Democrat Joe Biden, signed during the previous four years, 162. Trump, at roughly 140, is essentially moving at a pace not seen since Franklin Delano Roosevelt's presidency, when the Great Depression necessitated urgent action.

But the number alone fails to capture the unprecedented scope of Trump's actions. Without seeking congressional approval, Trump has used his orders and directives to impose hundreds of billions of dollars annually in new import taxes and reshape the federal bureaucracy by enabling mass layoffs.

John Woolley, a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara and co-director of the American Presidency Project, sees "very aggressive assertions of presidential authority in all kinds of ways" that are far more audacious than anything done by former presidents. That includes Biden's student debt forgiveness program and Barack Obama's decision to allow residency for immigrants who arrived in the country illegally as children.

"None of those had the kind of arbitrary, forceful quality of Trump’s actions," Woolley said.

145% tariff rate on China Trump's tariff agenda has unnerved the global economy. He's gone after the two biggest US trade partners, Mexico and Canada, with tariffs of as much as 25% for fentanyl trafficking. He's put import taxes on autos, steel and aluminum. On his April 2 "Liberation Day," he slapped tariffs on dozens of countries that were so high that the financial markets panicked, causing him to pull back and set a 10% baseline tax on imports instead to allow 90 days of negotiations on trade deals.

But that pales in comparison to the 145% tariff he placed on China, which prompted China to fight back with a 125% tax on US goods. There are exemptions to the US tariffs for electronics. But inflationary pressures and recession fears are both rising as a trade war between the world's two largest economies could spiral out of control in dangerous ways.

The US president has said that China has been talking with his administration, but he's kept his description of the conversations vague. The Chinese government says no trade negotiations of any kind are underway. Trump is banking on the tariffs raising enough revenue for him to cut taxes, even as he simultaneously talks up the prospect of an agreement.

So far, despite the economic risks, the Trump team shows little desire to budge, even as the president claims a deal with China will eventually happen.

"I believe that it’s up to China to de-escalate because they sell five times more to us than we sell to them," Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNBC on Monday.

More than 10,000 square miles of Crimea Trump said during his presidential campaign that he could quickly defuse the Russian-started war in Ukraine. But European allies and others say the US president's statements about how to end the war reflect a troubling affinity for Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

Trump's peace proposal says that Ukraine must recognize Russian authority over the more than 10,000 square miles (26,000 square kilometers) of the Crimean Peninsula. Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskyy rejected the idea out of hand: "There is nothing to talk about — it is our land, the land of the Ukrainian people."

Russia annexed the area in 2014 when Obama was president, and Trump says he's simply being realistic about its future.

The four meetings that Trump's envoy, Steve Witkoff, has had with Putin have yet to produce a trustworthy framework for the deal that Trump wants to deliver.

After recent Russian missile attacks on Ukrainian cities and towns, Trump posted on social media that perhaps Putin "doesn’t want to stop the war, he’s just tapping me along."

Over 2,000 more Palestinians in Gaza dead Trump was eager to take credit for an "epic ceasefire" agreement in the Israel-Hamas war in order to restart the release of hostages taken in Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, attack. But the ceasefire ended in March, and more than 2,000 Palestinians have died since the temporary truce collapsed. Palestinian officials have put the total number of deaths above 52,200. Food, fuel and medicine have not entered the Gaza Strip for almost 60 days.

Trump said in February that he would remove the Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and relocate them elsewhere, suggesting that the United States could take over the area, level the destroyed buildings and construct a luxurious "Riviera of the Middle East."

Roughly 280,000 federal job losses The Department of Government Efficiency, led by tech billionaire and adviser Elon Musk, is dramatically shrinking the government workforce. Across all agencies, there have been about 60,000 firings, including at the IRS, which might make it harder to collect taxes and reduce the budget deficit. Another 75,000 federal workers accepted administration buyout offers. And the Trump administration has floated at least another 145,000 job cuts.

Those estimated job losses don't include the possible layoffs and hiring freezes at nonprofits, government contractors and universities that had their federal funding frozen by the Trump administration.

The federal government had about 3 million federal employees, including at the US Postal Service, when Trump became president, according to the Labor Department.

139,000 deportations The Trump administration says it has deported 139,000 people who were in the United States without proper legal authority. Trump’s first months also have produced a sharp drop in crossings at the Southwest border, with Border Patrol tracking 7,181 encounters in March, down from 137,473 the same month last year.

Deportations have occasionally lagged behind Biden’s numbers, but Trump officials reject the comparison as not "apples to apples" because fewer people are crossing the border now.

The administration maintains that it's getting rid of violent and dangerous criminals. But many migrants who assert their innocence have been deported without due process.

In April, the Supreme Court directed the Trump administration to "facilitate" the return to the US of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an El Salvador citizen who was deported to his home country. Abrego Garcia had been living in Maryland and had an immigration court order preventing his deportation to his native country over fears he would face persecution from local gangs. So far, Abrego Garcia remains held in a Salvadoran prison.

Trump said last week that he won the presidential election on the promise of deportations and that the courts are interfering with his efforts.

"We’re getting them out, and a judge can say, ‘No, you have to have a trial,’" Trump said. "The trial's going to take two years, and now we’re going to have a very dangerous country if we’re not allowed to do what we’re entitled to do."