Toddler begs dad for her Iran-held Brit mum Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe to be home for Christmas in emotional video-phone call
IRAN-held Brit Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s little girl has written to Father Christmas asking for just one thing — her mummy and daddy to be together again.
Toddler Gabriella was aged 20 months when she and her mum were stopped by the hardline Revolutionary Guard as they tried to board a flight home to the UK after visiting family.
Former BBC World Service Trust (now called BBC Media Action) employee Nazanin was accused of running a global spy network behind the cover of training journalists.
She was thrown into prison and sentenced to five years, with the first weeks spent in solitary confinement away from her precious daughter.
Now 18 months later, three-year-old Gabriella has spent almost as much time living in her grandparents’ flat in Tehran as she did in London with British-Iranian mum Nazanin and dad Richard.
Her knowledge of English stretches to just a handful of basic words and her main language is now Farsi.
Last week The Sun on Sunday was able to watch as Richard made an emotional video-phone call to Gabriella just after she had her twice-weekly prison visit to her mum.
Tears welled in his eyes as accountant Richard asked her where she had seen Nazanin.
She chanted back “She’s in a cage” in her sweet sing-song voice, painting a childlike yet grim picture of her mum’s nightmare ordeal.
Drawing a picture of her mum standing by a tree, Gabriella told Richard she had written to Father Christmas when she saw her.
The little girl said: “I just want to be with mummy and daddy again and I want us all to be at home.
“If he can get me a dolly that would be nice but I want mummy and daddy to take me to nursery, that’s what I really want.’’
Gabriella also said: “I gave mummy a big kiss and cuddle and I said I loved her very much. I gave her a kiss and a cuddle from you as well.’
Nazanin is accused of being there to “damage the regime’’ but her family insist she was just on holiday.
Her cause was not helped when Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson blundered by saying she was in Iran to train journalists.
Officials there immediately jumped on the remarks which he later withdrew.
During the 45 minutes together, Gabriella drew pictures with Nazanin, played with Plasticine and then made paper hats — all under the watchful eyes of female guards.
It is not the childhood the couple imagined for her before they went to Iran in March last year.
She had attended nursery school in Hampstead, North London, and would play in the park with her parents and friends.
Richard said: “The last few months have been incredibly hard. I’m a father and a husband but I don’t have the two most important people in my life with me.
“When Nazanin was held in solitary confinement, some of the guards were really cruel to her, playing mind games. They were interrogators trying to humiliate her and break her. It was horrible but now she has been moved they are more normal.
“For Gabriella, it’s like being in some sort of Harry Potter fantasy world. We only speak on the telephone, and to see her growing up and changing with long hair now is hard to take when I am so far away from her and Nazanin.
“Nazanin speaks English to her but she is growing up in Iran with her Iranian relatives and going to an Iranian nursery so she has forgotten much of the English she knew when she was in London.
“She tells her friends that mummy is in prison but it’s a concept that is hard to imagine a three-year-old girl has to live with.”
There are fears Nazanin’s sentence could be increased to 16 years after an Iranian television news bulletin accused her and Richard of being MI6 agents.
Her health has been affected by all the months in prison and she recently had a breast cancer scare.
Doctors have given her the all-clear but there are growing fears over her mental wellbeing.
She is suffering increasingly from panic attacks, depression and anxiety.
And it emerged she was now suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder after the fresh allegations were made against her on TV.
Last week there was a glimmer of hope after a health commissioner from the country’s Prosecutor’s Office visited her to assess whether she could be released.
But no decision is expected ahead of a new trial on spying charges due to start next Sunday.
Her husband and supporters have been campaigning for her release, with more than 1.4million people signing a petition.
Double Oscar-winning actress Emma Thompson joined a rally calling for her to be freed.
Nazanin is a charity worker with the Thomson Reuters Foundation and they have lobbied the United Nations as well as the British Government, appealing for them to up the effort to secure her release.
Her local MP Tulip Siddiq has written to the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Vincent Nichols, asking the Vatican to step in.
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Richard added: “I just want them all back here for Christmas, that would be the best present ever.
“We have a glimmer of hope with the health ommissioner’s visit but we still have to keep the pressure up on the Government.
“I don’t even want to contemplate her spending 16 years in jail. I have to keep going, fighting and hoping this will all end soon.”