An Iranian-British woman detained in Iran faces charges of trying to cause the “soft toppling” of the government, a state-run news agency reported Wednesday.
IRNA’s report marks the first official acknowledgment of the detention of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who works for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of the news agency.
The foundation did not immediately respond to a request for comment, though Reuters previously reported that the organization does not operate in Iran.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard detained Zaghari-Ratcliffe on April 3 at Tehran’s Imam Khomeini International Airport and later transferred her to a prison in the country’s Kerman province, according to the IRNA report. It said she had phone calls and met regularly with her family.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe was detained while trying to fly out of the country with her toddler daughter, Gabriella, who remains in Iran with family after authorities seized her passport, according to Amnesty.
The Guard said Zaghari-Ratcliffe, 37, had participated in the “design and implementation of cyber and media projects to cause the soft toppling of the Islamic Republic.” It did not elaborate. Iran’s mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Iranian law does not recognize dual citizenship. Iran’s government harbors deep suspicions about both Britain and the United States, linked in part to their role in a 1953 coup. A billboard put up in Tehran before February’s parliamentary election showed the face of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II replaced with that of a camel, warning voters about “foreign meddling.”

Source: Arab News