British Council Says Iranian Employee Residing In UK Released By Iran
British Council employee Aras Amiri has arrived in the United Kingdom after being released from an Iranian prison, the British Council said on Wednesday.
Amiri, an Iranian national who resides in Britain, was arrested in March 2018 during a visit to Tehran and sentenced to 10 years in prison the following year by the Iranian judiciary on charges of spying.
Due to tensions with Western powers, Iranian authorities banned cooperation with the British Council in 2019 and warned that such activity would result in prosecution.
"We are very pleased to confirm that British Council employee and Iranian citizen Aras Amiri has been acquitted by the Supreme Court in Iran of all charges previously made against her, following a successful appeal lodged by her lawyer," the British Council said in a statement.
Several British-Iranian nationals have been jailed in Iran on similar charges, including Thomson Reuters Foundation worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe who was sentenced to an additional year in prison in April 2021, shortly before finishing her five-year sentence.
Tehran is engaged in negotiations with major powers in Vienna to revive a 2015 nuclear agreement which the United States abandoned in 2018, subsequently reinstating tough sanctions on Iran's economy.
Report by Reuters
