THE UK Foreign Office has no obligations to help British nationals who are wrongly imprisoned or tortured abroad, it has emerged.
The facts came into the public spotlight after the head of consular affairs at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), Sarah Broughton, replied to a letter from the lawyers of imprisoned British-Iranian Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a charity worker with the Thomson Reuters Foundation, was arrested in April 2016 at Tehran airport while returning to London with her then 22-month-old daughter.
Tehran’s prosecutor general said in October 2017 that Zaghari-Ratcliffe was being held because she ran “a BBC Persian online journalism course which was aimed at recruiting and training people to spread propaganda against Iran”.
Her family and lawyers have denied this, saying she was visiting the country on holiday. However, Boris Johnson, then foreign secretary, made the situation worse by contradicting this position and saying Zaghari-Ratcliffe was “simply teaching people journalism” while decrying her imprisonment as a mockery of justice.
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Efforts to get Zaghari-Ratcliffe released have been ongoing for years. Although she was given diplomatic protection by then foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt in 2019, the FCDO have said that it “did not confer any specific legal obligations” upon them.
In the letter reported by The Times, the FCDO say they have no legal obligation to provide assistance to help those arrested while traveling on a British passport.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s lawyers responded: “If it is really the government's position that it has no obligations even in the extreme and unique circumstances of Nazanin's case, then that sends an extremely alarming message to the rest of the British public.”
However, the Foreign Office’s position is not new. It states in the FCDO’s official Support For British Nationals Abroad: A Guide that: “There is no legal right to consular assistance. All assistance provided is at our discretion.”
The document also outlines what the Government cannot do to help someone while they are abroad. This includes ensuring safety and security, investigating crimes or helping people get out of prison, providing legal advice, making travel arrangements, or getting involved in private disputes.
The document clearly states: “We expect British people to take responsibility for themselves and their safety while overseas.”
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