U.K. officials are petitioning Iran for approval to test a British woman held prisoner by the Islamic Republic for coronavirus.
Tehran arrested and imprisoned Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe in 2016 on charges of planning espionage against the Iranian government. Her husband, Richard Ratcliffe, now claims Iran has left his wife exposed to the illness that is sweeping through the Middle Eastern nation, according to the New York Post.
Ratcliffe appeared on Good Morning Britain on Monday and said he spoke to his wife, a dual citizen of Iran and Britain, on Saturday about her health and the steps being taken by the Iranian government against the coronavirus.
“Last week, there was no issue with anyone new, and then it’s just swept through the prison, through the whole country almost overnight,” Ratcliffe said. “The prison [where Zaghari-Ratcliffe is being held] ran out of all cleaning materials, disinfectants. It ran out of medicines.”
He added, “Of course, the whole country was running out because it just was blindsided.”
Richard Ratcliffe last spoke to his wife on Saturday and is desperate for her to be tested for the infection.
He says he has asked the government to press for her to be tested. pic.twitter.com/KBsDAUttsp
— Good Morning Britain (@GMB) March 2, 2020
Zaghari-Ratcliffe said that she was ill with something more severe than “a normal cold” and first experienced “all the symptoms” of the COVID-19 virus last week.
“I know I need to get medicine to get better,” Zaghari-Ratcliffe told the Times of London.
Ratcliffe noted that the Iranian regime had not appeared to regard the spread of the coronavirus as a serious threat and that many top officials have a “certain bravado” and insist on carrying on as normal.
Despite experiencing coronavirus symptoms for a week, Zaghari-Ratcliffe has still not been tested for the disease. Other prisoners are now afraid to go near her because they believe she has caught the virus that originated in China in December.
The prison “is obviously under orders not to test anyone,” Ratcliffe said.
