MP who campaigned for Nazanin’s release says first meeting was ’emotional’

The Labour MP for Hampstead and Kilburn who campaigned for six years to release Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe from jail has spoken about their “emotional” first meeting. Tulip Siddiq said seeing the 43-year-old mum-of-one in her constituency on Sunday was “surreal”.

Nazanin, the British-Iranian charity worker, returned back to the UK from Iran early on Thursday morning after the UK agreed to settle a £400 million debt dating back to the 1970s. Tulip said it was “quite weird” because she had come to know Nazanin’s life “so intimately” from speaking to her as she went through her ordeal, but the pair had never actually met in person.

She said: “We knew we were going to meet each other and she had called me to say that I was one of the first people she wanted to see. So she came to West Hampstead and we hugged each other for ages and we were both quite tearful and it was quite emotional meeting her.

READ MORE: First picture of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe reunited with family after ‘six years of hell’ in Iranian jail

“She knew so much about me and I knew so much about her and she did thank me profusely but I said to her ‘it wasn’t me, this was a shared victory and everyone here in this community campaigned for you and, obviously, full credit to Richard – he was the one who was relentless in his campaigning’.”

Tulip said Nazanin was “warm and motherly”, was “in every way, the way I imagined”, and talked of how she dreamt of doing simple things like the school run and going to the park with her daughter, Gabriella, seven, while in solitary confinement. “Surreal, completely surreal,” she added.

Tulip started her campaign to release Nazanin in April 2016 when Nazanin’s husband, Richard, requested her assistance his wife’s return. The MP became a prominent voice calling for more to be done to have Nazanin brought back and she publicly backed Richard during his hunger strike.

She said: “It felt surreal because there he was, he wasn’t on his own, I cracked a joke with him, which was probably in poor taste but I’ve known him so long, I said ‘I see you’re not Billy no mates anymore’ and he was laughing because he knew exactly what I meant.”

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