Jailed British-Iranian mum Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has had her prison rations cut since announcing her plan to embark on a hunger strike, it has emerged.
The 40-year-old, who has been detained in Iran since 2016, said last week that she intended to begin the strike on Monday January 14, alongside fellow inmate and human rights activist Narges Mohammadi.
The two women are requesting medical treatment promised to them by a prison doctor, but denied by the Iranian authorities.
Following their announcement, Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s weekly Sunday phone-call with her husband, Richard Ratcliffe, was cancelled. But the pair were allowed a two-minute conversation on Monday morning, he told HuffPost UK.
“Thankfully calls are not completely banned. Following the announcement, phone calls were restricted, and it was revealed that prison rations had been reduced,” the campaigning dad added.
″[Nazanin] hasn’t started her hunger strike yet. She and Narges Mohammedi announced last week that they will go on hunger strike next Monday unless they are given the medical treatment promised by the prison doctor, but blocked by the prison authorities.
“But [we have had] no formal response yet on whether she will be allowed the recommended treatment, so are waiting to see what happens over the next couple of days.”
Ratcliffe said Zaghari-Ratcliffe and other prisoners at the Tehran facility had been denied some staple food, including chicken, eggs and some vegetables, but are still receiving potatoes, onions, carrots, rice, butter and cheese.
He added: “The families are still able to buy extra food for their relatives through the prison, with some commission taken, so it feels like that might be as much about cost-saving as actively wanting to punish the prisoners.”
But Ratcliffe, who has lobbied tirelessly for his wife’s release, said he believed prison conditions were “definitely being tightened in a number of ways” and that his wife was “worried, but better than I expected” on Monday.
“Though [she has] a sense of foreboding as to what this week will hold – she has been told that the prison authorities are going to come to speak to her,” he added.
“But she did not cry on the phone today.”
Zaghari-Ratcliffe needs treatment for lumps in her breasts, as well as neurological and psychiatric care, and her husband said he had been “unable to talk her out of” the planned three-day hunger strike.
The mum-of-one spent her 40th birthday on Boxing Day in prison as her husband revealed she feared she would be kept incarcerated for so long she would be unable to have a much longed-for second child.
December 29 marked 1,000 days since she was first arrested at Tehran’s Imam Khomeini airport on April 3 2016.
The couple’s MP Tulip Siddiq, tabled an urgent question in the Commons on Monday.
She told Foreign Office minister Alastair Burt: “Nazanin has been given a ration of food which has slowly decreased.
“Nazanin has been told the calls that she was allowed to make to her family and husband in London have now been restricted and will be further restricted.
“She has also been told that she will be denied medical access even though she has discovered lumps on her breast.
“In light of this Nazanin has said she will go on hunger strike from next week.”
She added: “In my conversations with the minister and the foreign secretary I haver found the to be v insistent on demanding that Nazanin is released, but the truth is this is now a matter of life and death.
“Tough rhetoric will not do anything. What we need is decisive action from our government to make sure that my constituent Nazanin comes home alive to West Hampstead.”
Burt expressed sympathy and replied that Iran does not recognise dual nationality but said Zaghari-Ratcliffe should nonetheless be eligible for parole.
He added: “We have noticed that if she is to be treated as an Iranian national as they wish, we’re now at a stage where she should be eligible for parole, and we would hope and believe that might be the course of action that could be taken, again I stress, on humanitarian grounds.”
Burt said there is constant communication with Iran over Zaghari-Ratcliffe, adding: “A request for diplomatic protection is still being considered as to whether or not this would add anything to the circumstances.”