Written evidence submitted by Ana Diamond AKC MPhil Oxon (ongoing), Dr. Aebraham Diamond and Dr. Eleanor Abbott-Diamond (SLH0004)

Dear Tom Tugendhat MP, Chairman of the Committee,

Dear Committee Members,

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

My parents and I (named above) submit the following written evidence in the context, and in continuation, to the open letter sent to the valued attention of Mr. Tom Tugendhat MP, the Chairman of the Committee, on March 22, 2022, on this matter. The open letter, titled “UK Hostage Policy” has been included in the list of appendices (Appendix 1).

My parents and I would wish the Committee to consider our evidence as part of this inquiry because we were held hostage in Iran for over four years between July 2014 and May 2018 (in my father’s case, until February 2019). More of this in the footnotes.[1] We were falsely accused of a number of national security crimes, such as “espionage for MI6” and "collaboration with hostile government of England”, in order to justify our unjust detention and ill-treatment. These spying accusations were entirely false and fabricated to exercise leverage over the British government.

In light of this inquiry’s remit, this submission does not provide a comprehensive account of the conditions of our detention or the torture we have endured throughout.

The remainder of our written evidence submission is organised into the following sections:

RELEVANT BACKGROUND
TRAVEL TO THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF IRAN
TRAVEL BAN
ARREST
DETENTION
RELEASE
INTERACTIONS WITH THE UK FOREIGN OFFICE
HARM SUFFERED
RECOMMENDATIONS
LIST OF APPENDICES

WRITTEN EVIDENCE SUBMISSION

In this evidence, we set out the facts relating to our visit to Iran in 2014, and our subsequent travel ban, arrest, detention, and release to the extent that they are relevant to the Committee’s inquiry. The events, facts and the relevant matters will focus more on my experience (Ana Diamond’s), and will be condensed for length and clarity purposes.

1. RELEVANT BACKGROUND

1.1. Iran’s practice of hostage-taking has evolved since 1979. In recent years (increasingly post-2010), Iran has sought to use detainees’ foreign citizenship to gain leverage in disputes or negotiations with the relevant country. The practice is now being carried out under the cover of law. As in our case, Iran used our family history and connections with the UK, our activities with the Conservative Party, our British naturalisation application (assumed citizenship) and UK residence to ground accusations of espionage and threats to national security, then subjected us to spurious criminal charges, kangaroo trials, and arbitrary prison.

1.2. What could have caused our wrongful detention? Tulip Siddiq MP, in the early minutes of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s press conference hosted on March 21, 2022, refers to an incident that took place in 2013 when three Iranian officials arrived in Heathrow to “negotiate the repayment of the historic debt that we owed to Iran”. According to Ms Siddiq, they were arrested at Heathrow, then detained at a UK detention centre, and then deported a few days later. The Iranians subsequently claimed they were ill-treated.

The Foreign Office, in their latest correspondence with me dated 7 April 2022, have stated that this “action was consistent with UK policy at the time, which set out that no official visits from Iran to the UK should take place, following an attack on the British Embassy in Tehran in 2011.” Even so, Ms Siddiq states in that same press conference that Rt Hon Jack Straw firmly believes that this 2013 saga led to some quarters of the Iranian political circles (such as the Islamic Revolutionary Guards, better known as the IRGC) to take the matters into their own hands, namely by taking innocent but convenient individuals with links to the UK as hostage.

Given the magnitude of media attention on Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe, it was natural that Mr Straw's emphasis would be solely on her. However, the timing of our travel ban, and our subsequent arrest, implies that the tensions between UK-Iran also directly impacted our lives — we were placed under a travel ban less than a year later, in 2014 (during which we were interrogated and extensive attempts were made to pressure us into cooperating with the IRGC), and formally arrested on the very same year as Nazanin was. This is not a coincidence, given Iran’s track record in arbitrarily detaining individuals with either British citizenship or permanent residency (namely Kamal Foroughi in 2011; Rosa Saberi in 2013; Ghoncheh Ghavami in 2014; Ana Diamond and her parents in 2016; Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe in 2016; Anoosheh Ashoori in 2017; Kylie Moore-Gilbert, Morad Tahbaz and Abbas Edalat in 2018; Aras Amiri and Kameel Ahmady in 2019; Mehran Raoof in 2020; and most likely a number of others that are not publicly known).

1.3. When arriving in Iran in late summer of 2014, we possessed a Finnish and Iranian nationality with permanent residency in the UK. Six months prior to our trip, my mother, father and I had applied to become British citizens. My paternal grandmother is of English descent, which is also a point we proved in our communications with UK officials as well as in our naturalisation applications. This information could have been found through our emails, which I presume were hacked during our detention.

I mention this factor for two reasons:

1) Because the Iranian authorities appeared to be convinced that we already possessed the British nationality (that we had obtained it before arriving in Iran) and that our Finnish passports were a mere “cover-up”. This, along with the said implications of the 2013 Heathrow incident and the changing political climate during the JCPOA talks, contributed to our arrest and detention and formed the basis for false allegations that we were involved in “espionage” and “collaborating with the hostile government of England”. This is also a line used and perpetuated by the Iranian national media toward our case, and, for example, our case appearing next to Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s in a Kayhan article in 2018, implying that there is a link between the two (Appendix 2).

2) The Foreign Office, both during our predicament and after, overlooked how our permanent residence in the UK and our naturalisation application prior to our travel to Iran may have caused, or at the very least, impacted, our arrest and how we were treated in Iran. The lack of acknowledgement publicly meant that we felt incredibly isolated and vulnerable, and this became more evident in my correspondence with the Foreign Office following my release and return to the UK in the summer of 2018. I will discuss more about this in section 6.

2. TRAVEL TO THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF IRAN

2.1. My parents and I travelled separately and met in Iran in July 2014 for the purpose of visiting some of our relatives and to facilitate the transfer of our assets to the UK. For your information, I was 19-years-old during this time and on my second year of undergraduate studies at King’s College London.

2.2. Upon my arrival at Tabriz International Airport, I was accused of using a counterfeit Iranian passport. This was an excuse to confiscate all of my belongings, including passports, place me under a travel ban, and to launch an alleged “investigation”. After hours of interrogation by the passport officers, they acknowledged that my passport was valid. During the course of that questioning, my Iranian and Finnish passports, laptop and phone were all confiscated (none of these were ever returned to me). I believe many of the photos and documents on my laptop and phone (and potentially other unknown sources of information) were used to justify my and my family’s detention and fabricated accusations.

3. TRAVEL BAN

3.1. Between July 2014 until our arrest in January 2016, we were held under a travel ban and we were not kept informed of any developments regarding our case. During this period, we were summoned to attend interrogations at various different government “safe houses” in downtown Tehran.

3.2. As early as August 6, 2014, only a couple of weeks into our travel ban, I notified my university, King’s College London, of our ongoing ordeal. As can be seen in Appendix 3, Dr. Rosalind Galt, the Head of Department, writes to me that “I have been following up with the College to see what we can do to support you in this difficult situation”. This means that the Department had informed the Central management of my predicament, and it is safe to presume that the Central management were considering seeking, or had already sought, the advise of the UK Government. As early as Autumn/Winter of 2014, the British government had been notified of this. Shortly after this, the Department assigns me a specific point of contact (Professor Chris Berry) because of government instructions to limit my contact to one person in the Department.

3.3. The accusations we came faced expanded over time to include other British security and

intelligence agencies (such as SAS, G4S, UK’s NATO Office, most notably and pertinently,

International Military Services - IMS) as the Iranian authorities sought to create a case justifiable enough to punish us for our foreign nationality and to obtain some benefit either from us or from the British government.

3.4. By November 1, 2014, I took a tremendous risk and sent an email directly to then-Prime Minister David Cameron, Sajid Javid MP (then-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport), and others, in order to notify the British government of our situation and to directly ask for diplomatic assistance. In the email, I specifically asked for the UK government to take action to help our release. (Please see Appendix 4).

3.5. In a letter shared with me post-release, on June 1, 2018, written by Kate Harvey, the Head of Student Conduct and Appeals of King’s College London (Appendix 5), there is a summary section in my student records that discloses an exchange between the Department and the College’s central management. Sometime in late 2014, my Department informs the Central management of the University that I am unable to return. As far as I have been informed, there were no further interactions between the Department and the Central management until August 3, 2016, by which point the UK Government had advised the University to minimise the number of people getting in touch with me and to halt automatic emails (as my emails, by this point, were under the control of my interrogators in Evin prison).

4. ARREST

4.1. My parents and I were arrested on 12 January 2016 by plain clothes Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC) intelligence officers. We were not shown an arrest warrant. One of the officers had a gun behind his back and another held a camera, which I believe he used to film the arrest.

4.2. Shortly after my arrest on 12 January, I was taken to the Special Clerical Court (as was my father, and later, mother) to be questioned by a number of public prosecutors, including Hojjatol-Eslam Zanjani and Ayatollah Abdollahi, who was the deputy to Ayatollah Ebrahim Reisi, the Prosecutor-General of Iran (and the current President of Iran). I was asked if I was a “spy” and about my activities in the UK. I was asked a number of other questions, many related to my life and connections in the UK. I denied all accusations, as did my parents.

4.3. During this time and during my detention, I was denied the right to legal representation or consular assistance. At the end of the day, I was taken to Evin Prison, as were my parents. We were held in separate solitary confinement cells.

5. DETENTION

5.1. For the first 35 days of my detention in the solitary section, the IRGC officers refused to tell me where I was and refused to inform anyone of my detention. My relatives, who failed to get any information out of the police, hospitals, and the intelligence organisations, were so concerned that they filed missing persons’ reports for us.

5.2. During detention, I was interrogated and further accused of working for HM the Queen, the British government, MI5, MI6, and helping create the British government’s “infiltration” network in the political circles of Iran. My father was interrogated heavily on his alleged work with IMS and G4S, and interrogated on questions directly related to the non-payment of £400m+. We were also falsely accused of being trained with NATO, a part of the JCPOA negotiations team and working directly with Rt Hon Catherine Ashton. These accusations were also present when our cases were covered in the Iranian state-sponsored domestic media.

5.3. Based on the nature of 1) the accusations, 2) the timing, 3) the questions, and 4) the information spreading in Iranian state media and cyber space (Iranian cyber army network), it is evident that we had been arrested in retaliation toward the outstanding £400m UK-Iran debt and that the Iranian authorities put us through great suffering, uncertainty and fear in order to put pressure on the UK government to make a payment. When our case did not go public in Britain as they expected, or they did not get a reaction they had hoped for from the British government, they leaked false information of our cases to the national news, and started arresting more British-Iranians in 2016, such as Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe.

6. RELEASE

6.1. After 8 months, I was released on excess bail from Evin Prison on 13 August 2016, just two days before my first scheduled hearing. This bail was never returned to us.

6.2. My father was not released until much later, in 8 January 2018. He was also released on condition of a bail payment of 1,000,000,000 Toman. He was told that as his release had been secured on the basis of "goodwill", his continued release was not guaranteed and he continued to be harassed, intimidated and interrogated by the IRGC, and subject to a travel ban.

6.3. Prior to my father’s release, on 9 December 2017, Boris Johnson (the then Foreign Secretary of the UK) visited Iran. The prominent conservative Iranian state newspaper Kayhan reported that Mohammad Javad Karimi-Ghoddusi (the former IRGC General and a spokesperson for the Iranian Parliament’s Security Commission) had stated that Boris Johnson had asked for the release of four prisoners, including my father. The article refers to him as "Mr Choubtaraash”, which is the second half of his Iranian surname. The article goes onto state that “the British want to pay the money that belongs to us indirectly, in the form of exchange of spies and infiltrators” [translated from the article], referring to us as “the first spy” Foreign Secretary Johnson came to free. The contents of this article have been re-distributed in a wide array of IRGC-affiliated media outlets since, such as to FARS News (Appendix 2).

6.4. The actions of the Iranian state-media are important because considering that:

a) it was the Iranian national news outlets in 2019 that first leaked the news of the incarceration of Anoosheh Ashoori without the consent of his family,

and then again,

b) it was the Iranian national media that circulated the news about the release of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori in March 2022 before the British government had verified the matter,

it is evident that in the same manner, the Iranian national media circulated the news about the Foreign Secretary’s intention to release my father, and by extension, us. A month later, my father was released from Evin Prison in January 2018.

7. INTERACTIONS WITH THE UK FOREIGN OFFICE

7.1. As mentioned in 1.4, the Foreign Office, both during our predicament and after, underestimated how our permanent residence in the UK and our naturalisation application prior to our travel to Iran may have caused, or at the very least, impacted, our arrest and how we were treated in Iran.

Notwithstanding the reality that we were persistently threatened with further prosecution by the IRGC if we wished to engage in contact with the British authorities in Tehran or in London, I took considerable risks to inform the British Foreign Office of our ordeal in Iran - both before our detention (during the travel ban) and after it. In addition to my emails, for example, sometime in 2015, I had sent a letter to Mr Ben Fender OBE — who was in the British embassy in Tehran — to help us, but I do not know if he read the letter, considered our plight or prepared a reply.

I have no doubts that the Foreign Office was aware of our troubles in Iran; in fact, I have been informed by a number of diplomats that this was the case, and that there had been efforts made to help us. However, we have not been kept in the loop of all the details.

7.2. I came to realise the grim reality of it all after I fled Iran and returned to the UK: by the time I reached the UK, there was no support system available for me. I was homeless, couch surfing with friends, and I did it for months until my university offered me a student accommodation in September. Beyond the physical and emotional damage, there were numerous financial repercussions, including on our credit.

From May until September 2018, I had very little guidance from the FCO, despite their acknowledgment that we had gone through a terrible ordeal in Iran, that I was all alone now back in London, and that my parents were still under a travel ban there.

In the early days of my return, I had a meeting with a civil servant from the FCO Iran desk (Mr SB, the Deputy Head of Consular Special Cases). I can disclose the full name if requested. He was sympathetic, but I understood that there was no framework in place as far as such situations should be handled. There was also an ongoing sense of denial for any responsibility that should be taken for individuals that had been arrested because of their British background/residence but were not necessarily British citizens (Appendix 6).

7.3. As far as official letter-writing goes, the recurring pattern was that the Foreign Office would not recognise its responsibility in our ordeal, despite the Iranian authorities clearly being convinced that we are British nationals and therefore accusing us of espionage for the MI6 and the British government (Appendix 7).

7.4. In the early stages of our ordeal, the Finnish embassy made attempts to contact the Iranian Foreign Ministry. However, their requests went unanswered, which in itself should have been a sign that this matter is instigated by the Revolutionary Guards and not the MFA. This was further crystallised when the Iranian MFA informed them that they do not hold our passports.

In return, the Finnish embassy in Tehran, whilst aware and engaged with our case, withdrew their support. In 2017/2018, when I visited their embassy and met with a senior diplomat (Ms Helli Lantinen), she argued that we had lived in the UK for nearly a decade and that she could not defend our innocence as she could neither confirm nor deny if we, indeed, did work for the British intelligence services. Her rationale was that she had no way of knowing if the accusations the Iranians were making were correct or not.

This meant that we were left completely vulnerable and defenceless from both sides, all the while being essentially punished for holding an assumed British nationality.

Please see Appendix 9 and 10 for an exchange of official letters between myself, Rt Hon Greg Hands MP, Rt Hon Jeremy Hunt MP, and Rt Hon Alistair Burt MP. These letters demonstrate how our residence in the UK, and our applications to become British citizens in 2014, were noted by the Foreign Office and their impact on our case realised, and yet they consistently sought to deflect responsibility and push our case to be handled by the Finns or the Iranians.

7.5. In addition to the descriptions provided in the list of appendices below, it would be worthwhile to add here that Rt Hon Alistair Burt, who at the time was the FCO Minister of State for the Middle East and North Africa, was aware of the case of Aras Amiri (Iranian national with UK permanent residence). He must have been briefed that Ms Amiri did not possess a British passport but that had been arrested due to her connections to the UK.

Despite this, Aras Amiri's case was brought up or referenced in House of Commons, House of Lords, and PMQs, as well as in research reports conducted by the House of Commons. How come? Selective advocacy is surely not the intention here.

8. HARM SUFFERED

8.1. As a result of the physical and psychological distress and torture that we endured throughout this detention, we have developed numerous severe health problems.

8.2. This situation has been exacerbated by the theft by the IRGC of my family’s property in Iran, undertaken by forcing my father to sign cheques and notary documents while in detention. This resulted in the seizure of his property in Iran (worth approx. £5.5 million).

8.3. This would not be the first time that the IRGC have extorted a detainee’s personal wealth: more recently, for example, in August 2020 when Canadian-Iranian software engineer Behdad Esfahbod returned to Iran to visit his family, he was detained, posted bail, and yet his 2-bedroom apartment in Tehran was confiscated when he fled the country. Similarly, another Canadian-Iranian couple, Afarin Neyssari and Karan Vafadari, was coerced into posting bail for $10 million.

9. RECOMMENDATIONS

The government should formally acknowledge and address that Iran's detention of innocent foreign and dual-nationals has impacted numerous lives, many of whom have not been able to voice their cases publicly.

Professor Carla Ferstman and Marina Sharpe published a comprehensive report in the Journal of International Criminal Justice on Iran’s arbitrary detention of foreign and dual nationals for leverage over the detainee’s (other) country of nationality. It provides an overview of Iran’s pattern of conduct since 2010, involving at least 66 victims.

This inquiry, while prompted by the MPs of Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Mr Ashoori due to their lengthy and highly-public ordeals, would not serve its full purpose if it chose to be exclusionary or selective.

9.1. UK Hostage Support Fund

As mentioned in section “7. HARM SUFFERED”, Iran’s efforts to extort money either from the hostages’ governments or hostages themselves is not new. As testified above, when we were released on bail of 1 billion Tomans (each), the bail was never returned to us, neither were the £5.5m worth of assets that were seized. This is one of the matters we have extensively talked about with many organisations, including Hogan Lovells and REDRESS, ever since our return. We have been desperate to find measures to get our confiscated assets back.

The Ashooris have successfully managed to crowdfund the £27,000 that Iran demanded of

them as direct ransom on the eve of his release in March 2022. However, why is it that a returning hostage has to resort to the mercy of the public? Why is it that the UK - as one of the most powerful and compassionate countries - does not have a hostage support scheme of this sort in place?

9.2. While during the past five years there was a lot of talk about whether the £400m debt should be paid to Iran or not, surprisingly (and shockingly), there has been zero provision made for restitution or reparation for the victims of this cause. When the payment of £400m was being made, there should have been efforts made to guarantee that the losses of the victims are covered too. As this opportunity has now been missed, there is a duty to ensure that some kind of scheme exists to compensate the victims of hostage taking.

9.3. We would like to recommend to the Committee that, in the absence of credible due process against the government of Iran, we should also have the courage and novelty to initiate ways to address the grievances and the needs of returning hostages in the form of a Support Fund. The financing for the reparations could come from the frozen assets of those perpetrators subjected to Magnitsky sanctions, which is an existing framework. As you are aware, the seizure of assets by virtue of sanctions imposed on individuals as a consequence of their involvement in crime and conflict is a well-established principle in the British and international law. Repurposing frozen assets, while also finding new ways to interpret and enforce the Taking of Hostages Act 1982, may require changes to existing networks, but it is doable if we can obtain political will to support it.

10. LIST OF APPENDICES

Appendix 1 – “UK Hostage Policy” Open Letter sent to the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, as well as other relevant figures. The contents of the email largely reiterate what has been written in the submission paper.

Certain parts of the email, including email addresses that are not in the public domain, have been omitted for data protection and privacy purposes.

From: Ana-Diamond [omitted]

Sent: 22 March 2022 19:28

To: layla.moran.mp@parliament.uk, boris.johnson.mp@parliament.uk, tom.tugendhat.mp@parliament.uk, tulip.siddiq.mp@parliament.uk, catherine.west.mp@parliament.uk, janet.daby.mp@parliament.uk, Free Nazanin Campaign < [omitted] >; anneliese.dodds.mp@parliament.uk, elizabeth.truss.mp@parliament.uk, Iain.duncansmith.mp@parliament.uk, alistair.burt.mp@parliament.uk,

Cc: publiccorrespondence@cabinetoffice.gov.uk, Leanna REDRESS < [omitted] >; Megan REDRESS < [omitted] >; Rachel Briggs < [omitted] >; Sir Terry Waite < [omitted] >; Charlie REDRESS < [omitted] >; Aebraham Diamond < [omitted] >; Eleanor Abbott-Diamond < [omitted] >

Subject: UK Hostage Policy, Support for Victims, Foreign Affairs Select Committee

Inquiry

Dear [list of recipients]

This email is lengthy and therefore divided into two parts. The first part is about the circumstances leading up to the arrest of dual-nationals during the period of 2014-2017, including the arrest of my family and I. The second part is an invitation to consider potential remedies for the victims of Iran's 'hostage diplomacy'.

To start, I should first express my utmost happiness for the return of Nazanin and Anoosheh. As I have said during my media interviews during the past couple of days, this truly was a day of victory for all of us who have campaigned to get them to the safety of the UK. For me, it reminded me of my own day of freedom, and that of my mother and my father, and of our return home. I simply could not contain my excitement, and I congratulate you all on this!

Having campaigned with Richard Ratcliffe, I know that his priority was to get his wife and Gabriella's mummy home. Anything that would follow - in terms of activism, lawsuit, charity work, etc - would all be up to Nazanin. He has all my support for that. In the meantime, however, we need to recognise that there is plenty we can do and address, especially given the fact that Iran's detention of innocent dual-nationals applies to more than a dozen British families (some of which we publicly do not know about).

Part 1: The Matter of Hostage Diplomacy and Circumstances Leading up to the Arrests

By observing Nazanin's case and the details that have come out of her experience, I am most convinced that, much like her, my family and I were also arrested and, effectively, held hostage, due to the souring relations between the UK and Iran.

From watching the first press conference that Nazanin gave yesterday (which, by the way, I must applaud: it was handled with poise and grace, despite the sensitive topic), I wanted to bring the following matter to your attention, hoping to initiate some discussion and create space for collective action:

Tulip Siddiq MP, in the very early moments of yesterday's press conference, refers to an incident that took place in 2013 when three Iranian officials arrived in Heathrow to "negotiate the repayment of the historic debt that we owed to Iran". According to Ms Siddiq, they were arrested at Heathrow, then detained at a UK detention centre, and then deported a few days later. The Iranians subsequently claimed they were ill-treated.

Ms Siddiq says that Rt Hon Jack Straw firmly believes that this 2013 saga led to some quarters of the Iranian political circles (such as the IRGC) to take the matters into their own hands, namely by taking innocent individuals with strong links to the UK as hostage. Given the magnitude of media attention on Nazanin, it was natural that Mr Straw's emphasis would be solely on her. However, the timing of our travel ban, and our subsequent arrest, implies that the rising tensions between UK-Iran also directly impacted our lives.

To recap, my family and I travelled to Iran in the summer of 2014. There was no reason for me, as someone who had never participated in any Iran-related activities, and at the young age of 19, to be suspected of any involvement with the MI6, as claimed by my captors. Less than a year after the 2013 Heathrow incident, the Supreme National Security Council of Iran placed us under a travel ban right upon arrival. However, they held off our arrest until January 2016, which also happens to be the year when Nazanin got arrested (three months after us). During this period, major political shifts were occurring with the JCPOA. This timing is crucial and allows us to connect many dots together.

Furthermore, the pattern of arrests and questions brought up in the interrogations

also all referred, one way or another, to the disputed debt; for example, my father was accused of working for the MoD and dealing with IMS and G4S, while I was accused of receiving training from the MI6 to 'infiltrate' the Iranian political system, as well as to get close with prominent Iranian politicians in order to influence their views and obtain information. Our experiences of captivity are well-covered in the media.

Given the fact that we were immediately placed under a travel ban upon arrival, it makes me question as to whether the Iranians did this because they were preparing to retaliate against the British, as Ms Siddiq and Mr Straw have noted.

The hostage ordeal is an event that stole four years of my youth, left me chronically in pain and permanently disabled. I will not go into great detail of how the four years affected us (five years, in my father's case), but rest assured that our lives experienced a tragic set back on every level possible. For these reasons, I am hopeful that Mr Tugendhat, on the inquiry that will be initiated for the Zaghari-Ratcliffe case, would take into account that our lives have also been absolutely destroyed by the reckless behaviour of Iran. It has been three year since we returned, but with no proper support network in place and certainly no answers to our questions, the "readjustment" period has been arduous, and at times, awkward.

I ask you to also take into consideration the lives that have not had the privilege of media's spotlight. As Elika Ashoori, Anoosheh's daughter, said on BBC Radio, drawing the media's attention to the plight of her father had been a true struggle because the family was not seen as "very relatable", bordering discrimination. This is indeed how many of us feel, but surely the value of our lives and our right to justice should not depend on the narration and validation of the media?

There are questions that have emerged for me and those supporting our case. For example, we would like to know what happened behind the scenes that led to my family's and my release, shortly after the visit of then-Foreign Secretary Rt Hon Boris Johnson to Iran in November of 2017? Why was it that, even despite Johnson's official visit and our subsequent acquittal, the Iranians came to confiscate our assets in exchange of our return to the UK, similar to what happened earlier this week to Mr Ashoori?

As a matter of fact, we should ask: if the UK had the intention to pay the historic £400m debt all along, why wait for so many years and allow innocent lives to become collateral damage? For example, why has this debt been paid now that Nazanin was almost done with her sentence, with only one month to go? Surely the 30 days left of

Nazanin's sentence was not what the £400m was paid for?

As Rt Hon Alistair Burt has written, we all "have a right to know" why there was resistance to paying the debt in good time, especially if the government officials were becoming increasingly aware of the damage that was being caused on the families. By prolonging this matter, the British negotiators effectively legitimised the Iranian criminal law by allowing the Iranians to hold Nazanin for six years, let alone the rest of us. I believe we are rightly entitled to feel like we deserve some answers and should be included on the matters of this inquiry.

Part 2: What's Next - UK Hostage Policy, Hostage Support Fund

As mentioned in Part 1 of this email, Anoosheh's release was conditional, much like

our release, with his family being asked to provide an equivalent of £27,000 in "fines" to Iran. This is ransom.

The efforts to extort money from detainees is not surprising. For example, when I was released on bail of 1 billion Tomans (equivalent of some £150,000+ at the time), the bail was never returned to my family. This is one of the matters we have extensively talked about with many organisations, including Hogan Lovells and Megan Smith of REDRESS, ever since our return. We have been desperate to find measures to get our confiscated properties back.

The Ashooris have successfully managed to crowdfund the £27,000. However, why is it that a returning hostage has to resort to the mercy of the public? Why is it that the UK - as one of the most powerful and compassionate countries - does not have a hostage support scheme of this sort in place?

What should be done?

There are many sound reasons for the British state to help in compensation for victims of hostage taking.

First, the hostage has little defence against the arrest: in fact, there is very little (if any) awareness of being 'on the radar' of the hostage-takers (in this instance, Iran/IRGC). The reality is, the risk of arrest is not very great and therefore the citizen cannot be expected to 'prepare' or avoid travel altogether. Insurance companies also do not cover Iran due to sanctions, so it is not possible for victims to claim compensation from their insurance companies afterwards.

Furthermore, the actions of the Iranians - who they arrest and when - are inextricably linked with the politics of the day - whether it is the JCPOA or the 40-years-old Chieftain Tanks Deal. This means that the British state does have a responsibility to ensure the safety of its citizens, as they now know how the Iranians operate.

Second, as we have discussed internally in the past, the perpetrators cannot be easily reached, which makes a civil action ineffective. Where the perpetrator is identified and located (for example, through the reporting of the victims to the state and/or REDRESS), the 'punishment' of the perpetrator is limited to visa restrictions; or, at most, to sanctions and asset freezes (via Magnitsky). The latter measure has unfortunately not been exercised yet.

Surprisingly, and perhaps shockingly, these measures —including the recent agreement of the UK with Iran on the payment of the £400m, “ring-fenced” for humanitarian aid— do not make provision for restitution or reparation for the victims of this cause. When this payment was being made, there should have been efforts made to guarantee that the losses of the victims are covered. As this opportunity has now been missed, there is a duty to ensure that some kind of scheme exists to compensate the victims of hostagetaking.

How can this be done?

It should be first recognised that the necessity of compensation arises out of the

inadequacy of restitution remedies. There are restrictions to take legal action against the Iranian perpetuators from the UK, unless new avenues are created with the leadership of legislators such as Tulip Siddiq. Until then, the help offered to hostages should not be treated as an act of good-will and charity, but rather of entitlement in light of our entirely preventable suffering.

In the absence of credible due process, what I am suggesting is straightforward: the politicians that were willing to pay the £400m debt to Iran while also recognising that what Iran was doing was hostage-taking, should also have the courage and novelty to initiate ways to address the grievances and the needs of returning hostages. After all, much of the measures taken against Iran in recent years (e.g. The Sanctions and Money Laundering Act 2018, which also includes a 'Magnitsky clause') has, in part, depended heavily upon hostages' experiences, reporting and detection of offences; yet, so far, there has been very little done to value the victims. This is where a solid UK hostage policy and a hostage support fund could be immensely helpful, if not

necessary.

The financing for the reparations could come from the frozen assets of those perpetrators subjected to Magnitsky sanctions. As you are aware, the seizure of assets by virtue of sanctions imposed on individuals as a consequence of their involvement in crime and conflict is a well-established principle in the British and international law. Repurposing frozen assets, while also finding new ways to interpret and enforce the Taking of Hostages Act 1982, may require changes to existing networks, but it is doable if we can obtain political will to support it (on the positive side, we have enough public momentum to do so already).

As a case example, in March 2019, a Canadian Senator Ratna Omidvar introduced the Frozen Assets Repurposing Act (Bill-S259). The main aim of this bill is to repurpose the frozen assets of corrupt foreign officials and to alleviate the suffering of the victims, building on the Magnitsky sanctions regime. I have attached a recent report prepared by Hogan Lovells on Restorative Justice; this is a good file on how similar schemes have been launched in other countries and how we can potentially initiate something alike for the British hostages here in the UK.

In all of this, your contributions will be critical, as they have been so far. My sincere thanks to all the executive parties, legislators, and campaigners in the UK for your tireless efforts. I hope your enthusiasm and passion for justice will continue, as this fight is far from over for many of us - including for those still in captivity.

I joined this campaign as soon as I was discharged from the St Thomas' Hospital in 2019, and I will proudly continue to be a part of it until we get the needed answers for the victims, including for my own family.

Happy to take initiative on this, but before doing so, I would appreciate to hear your views and ideas on this. It would be most effective if we can move forward together.

My warm thanks in advance.

Kind regards,

Ana Diamond

Ana-Diamond [omitted]

She/her

Balliol College, University of Oxford

ana.diamond@balliol.ox.ac.uk

Appendix 2 – Kayhan newspaper article (+ others)

The prominent conservative Iranian state newspaper Kayhan reported that Mohammad Javad Karimi-Ghoddusi (the former IRGC General and a spokesperson for the Iranian Parliament’s Security Commission) had stated that Boris Johnson had asked for the release of four prisoners, including us. The article refers to our case as "Mr Choubtaraash”, which is my father’s Iranian surname. The article goes onto state that “the British want to pay the money that belongs to us indirectly, in the form of exchange of spies and infiltrators” [translated from the article], referring to us as “the first spy” Foreign Secretary Johnson came to free. The contents of this article have been re-distributed in a wide array of IRGC-affiliated media outlets since, such as to Fars News, Ensaf News, and Jahan News.

Appendix 3 – August 2014, email from Head of Department, [name redacted] (King’s College London)

Appendix 4 – November 2014, first attempt at direct communication with the UK Government

Appendix 5 – University’s internal communication system

Appendix 6 – Correspondence with Deputy Head of Consular Special Cases at the FCO

As this submission will be in the public domain, the name of the civil servant is omitted. If the committee sees appropriate, the name can be disclosed in private capacity.

Reply:

Appendix 7 – Lack of Recognition for our Permanent Residence in the UK and our existing Naturalisation Application from 2014, “…it is not for the British government to provide a support letter to a Finnish/Iranian national”.

Appendix 8 – Finnish diplomat at the Embassy of Finland in Tehran, stating that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Iran have not responded to their request to return our Finnish passports and/or to meet with them (November 2014).

Appendix 9 – Letter from my former MP, Rt Hon Greg Hands, writing about our ordeal to Rt Hon Jeremy Hunt MP. Mr Hunt, who has been an avid advocate for Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe in the media, did not offer the same level of compassion and eagerness on our case. There was very little follow-up, and no offer of guidance on what to do next.

Appendix 10 – Letter from Rt Hon Alistair Burt, who at the time was the FCO Minister of State for the Middle East and North Africa, stating that this is a matter that should be relayed to the Finnish Foreign Ministry. For my parents, whose ancestors were English, and who have worked hard to make the UK our home and build our lives here, this did not seem a reasonable response. We had not lived in Finland since 2009, and it was clear that the IRGC were after us due to our links with the UK.

29 April 2022