DUBAI, March 16 – British-Iranian aid worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and dual national Anousheh Ashouri are on their way to a Tehran airport to leave Iran after years of detention, their lawyer Hojjat Kermani told Reuters on Wednesday.

“Both of them are on their way to the airport in Tehran to leave Iran,” Kermani said. Iran’s judiciary officials were not available for comment.

British lawmaker Tulip Siddiq, who is the member of parliament where Zaghari-Ratcliffe used to live in London, said on Twitter: “Nazanin is at the airport in Tehran and on her way home.”

Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a project manager with the Thomson Reuters Foundation was arrested at a Tehran airport in April 2016 and later convicted by an Iranian court of plotting to overthrow the clerical establishment.

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Her family and the foundation, a charity that operates independently of Thomson Reuters and its news subsidiary Reuters, deny the charge.

Britain’s Foreign Office, the foundation and Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s husband Richard did not respond to a request for comment.

Ashouri was sentenced to 10 years in jail in 2019 for spying for Israel’s Mossad and two years for “acquiring illegitimate wealth”, according to Iran’s judiciary.

TANK PAYMENT

The releases came after Tehran and London pressed on with talks about a long-standing 400-million-pound ($520 mln) debt.

Iran’s clerical rulers say Britain owes the money that Iran’s Shah paid up front for 1,750 Chieftain tanks and other vehicles, almost none of which were eventually delivered after the Islamic Revolution of 1979 toppled the U.S.-backed leader.

While the British and Iranian governments have said there is no connection between the debt and the case of Zaghari-Ratcliffe, Iranian state media in 2021 reported unidentified Iranian officials saying she would be freed once the debt was paid.

Iranian officials did not comment when asked whether the amount has been paid by Britain as reported by some Iranian outlets.

Reuters was unable to ascertain if a British team of negotiators was in Tehran nor what the subject of any discussion would be.

Siddiq tweeted on Tuesday that Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was given her British passport back.

Asked by a reporter whether he saw signs of optimism on Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s case, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Tuesday:

“I don’t want to tempt fate but clearly the negotiations about all our difficult consular cases have been going on for a long time and really I think it would not be sensible for me to comment until we have got a final result,” he said.

The Thomson Reuters Foundation said that she had travelled to Iran in a personal capacity and had not been doing work in Iran. The Thomson Reuters Foundation is a charity organisation that is independent of Thomson Reuters and operates independently of Reuters News.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who served most of her first sentence in Tehran’s Evin prison, was released in March 2020 during the coronavirus pandemic and kept under house arrest at her parents’ home in Tehran. In March 2021, she was released from house arrest but she was summoned to court again on the new charge.

In April 2021, she was then sentenced to a new term in jail on charges of propaganda against Iran’s ruling system, charges she denies. However that sentence has not yet started and she is banned from leaving the country.