British man pleads for release of wife and daughter being held in Iran

By Ali Kheradpir

10/05 16:22 CET

  | updated xx mn ago

  | updated at 10/05 - 10:23

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The husband of a British-Iranian woman is pleading for her release following her arrest in Iran last month.

The 23-month-old daughter of the couple, who live in London, is also unable to leave Iran after her British passport was confiscated.

Richard Ratcliffe claims his wife, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, has been held by Iranian Revolutionary Guards in an unknown location in solitary confinement and without charge since being detained at Tehran’s Iman-Khomeini airport on April 3.

She was transferred from Tehran, where her family lives, to a facility 1,000 kilometers away in Kerman Province. Meanwhile the couple’s toddler daughter Gabriella, is staying with grandparents in Tehran.

When Ratcliffe was on his way to pick up his wife at the airport in London, he received a phone call from Tehran. A phone call which was the first step in Nazanin’s story, which has only been made public after more than a month of delay.

“I was going to the pick her up at the airport and her brother telephoned me to say ‘don’t worry but there is a problem with the flight’ and she should be on a later flight.”

“My first understanding was there was a passport problem and they would catch her a later flight.”

But in fact she had already been arrested a few hours earlier.

“Nazanin’s family had gone to say goodbye at the airport and of course Gabriella, the baby, was given back to the grandmother.”

After 24 hours her family in Tehran hadn’t heard anything, so they went back to the airport to ask what had happened to her but “No-one gave them an answer and no-one knew.”

Ratcliffe has created a petition addressed to UK prime minister David Cameron and Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khomenei, calling for his wife’s release. As of May 10, the petition had more than 57,000 signatories.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who moved to the UK in 2007 and got a Masters degree in Communications Management, had taken her daughter to Iran to visit family. Several previous visits to Iran had passed without incident, he says.

“The last trip before that was last year in May for her sister’s wedding. I was in Iran last year and we had a wedding there as well. This time was the fourth time that she has been with the baby and traveled to Iran since the child was born in 2014.”

Zaghari-Ratcliffe, 37, works as a program coordinator for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, a charitable organisation with projects around the world but not in Iran.

Her husband says no-one in the family can understand the arrest:

“There is no charge and nothing is formal. All we’ve had was a phone call from the Revolutionary Guard to say this is an investigation related to the national security and that the investigation may last two or three months.”

“I can call Nazanin’s brother and I can talk to Gabriella via Skype which is still important to her. That’s the main contact.”

Islam in America Part 2

45 Women Rescued from Traffickers in Dominican Republic

SANTO DOMINGO – Forty-five Venezuelan and Colombian women were rescued from alleged sex traffickers in the northern Dominican city of Licey al Medio, the Attorney General’s Office said Friday.

The women were being sexually exploited at the Night Casa Blanca club, according to an official statement.

Juan Antonio Fernandez, Magdalena Batista, Jairo Castillo Carrera and Venezuelan national Jose Ramirez Jolvert were arrested on suspicion of human trafficking.

The investigation is ongoing, prosecutor Luisa Liranzo said.

Police confiscated multiple unlicensed guns found at the club, including a military-grade weapon.

The rescued women remain under the care of authorities.

5.8-Magnitude Earthquake Shakes Northern Taiwanese Cities

TAIPEI - An earthquake measuring 5.8 magnitude on the Richter scale jolted northern Taiwan on Thursday morning, causing panic and disrupting traffic in Taipei, according to the island's Seismological Observation Center.

The earthquake occurred at 11.17am local time (3.17 GMT) and was centered 15.5 kilometers southeast of the northeastern city of Yilan, originating in the Pacific Ocean at a depth of 19.7 kilometers.

The quake was felt strongly in northern Taiwanese cities, where a flurry of jolts and loud noises lasted for about 60 minutes, triggering widespread fear among the population.

One person was injured by falling wall tiles from a tall building in New Taipei City and the Taipei Mass Rapid Transit System has reduced train speeds as a precaution, according to an epa journalist.

Taiwan is located in a tectonic zone and suffers frequent earthquakes, with the most devastating in recent years taking place on Sept. 22, 1999, killing 2,416 people.

On February 6, 2016 an earthquake of 6.4 degrees in Tainan, south of the island, in which 117 people died due to the collapse of buildings was recorded. 

Obama to Keep Secrets about Area 51, but Clinton Promises to Release Info

WASHINGTON – U.S. President Barack Obama has no plans to divulge information about the secret military base known as Area 51, where spy aircraft were tested during the Cold War and where some believe confidential information about extraterrestrials is being kept, the White House said.

However, Democratic presidential favorite Hillary Clinton has said that, if she wins the election in November and takes office the following January, she will declassify the information on the Nevada Air Force base, The New York Times reported Wednesday.

At his daily press conference, White House spokesman Josh Earnest addressed a question on whether Obama would preempt his possible successor and declassify that information before he leaves office in January.

Earnest said that he was not “aware of any plans that the president has to make public any information about this,” adding that “I have to admit that I don’t have a tab on my briefing book for Area 51 today.”

Earnest noted that Obama has joked in the past that one of the advantages of being president is having access to information about Area 51.

The CIA in 2013 declassified certain documents confirming the existence of the Area 51 military base, created as per executive order by President Dwight Eisenhower in the mid-1950s as a zone in which to test the high-flying U-2 spy plane.

The secrecy surrounding the base for decades sparked an endless number of conspiracy theories, including those that claimed extraterrestrial technology gained from UFOs was being studied there.

In an interview on a New York radio program last month, Clinton said that, if it presents no problems for national security, she would like to declassify the Area 51 information, saying “I want to open the files as much as we can.”

That remark and other recent statements by Clinton that ETs “could have visited” Earth have won her the support of certain UFO enthusiasts, according to the NYT article

Islam in America Part 1

Three Kidnapped Red Cross Workers Released in Congo

KINSHASA – The International Committee of the Red Cross, or ICRC, announced on Saturday that three of its staff members kidnapped last Tuesday in North Kivu province in the Democratic Republic of Congo, or DRC, have been freed.

“We are relieved that their ordeal is over and that they are now back, safe and sound, with their families,” said Alessandra Menegon, the head of the ICRC delegation in the DRC.

The humanitarian organization refused to comment on the perpetrators or motives of the kidnapping and simply condemned the incident.

The three ICRC workers were part of an aid convoy heading to the northeastern town of Kyaghala to distribute supplies to some 8,000 people affect by the ongoing conflict in the African country.

The northeastern DRC has been plagued for decades by ongoing violence between numerous rebel groups and the Congolese army and United Nations forces.