Nigel Edwards QC leads 33 Bedford Row legal team - with Haydee Dijkstal and Annahita Moradi - in assisting the release of British Iranian Anoosheh Ashoori, who was unlawfully detained in Iranian prison. 

Today, Anoosheh Ashoori will return to the UK for the first time since August 2017.

Mr Ashoori has lived in the UK with his family for many years where he, his wife and his children were educated. He also represented his company in the UK until his retirement in 2014. He visited his elderly mother in Iran annually, and it was on his last trip there in August 2017 when he was arrested, never to make it back home to the UK.

Mr Ashoori was arrested in extremely worrying circumstances and detained by Iranian officials. He was charged the next day with a vaguely worded offence against national and foreign security, 'Cooperating with a Hostile State against the Islamic Republic'.

In detention, he was held incommunicado and made subject to solitary confinement, regular interrogations, sleep deprivation and other ill-treatment.  He attempted suicide three times including going on hunger strike for 17 days.

He was detained for over one year pending trial. The Revolutionary Court rejected all the defence lawyers Mr Ashoori proposed, so he represented himself in what appears to have been a grossly unfair trial lacking any meaningful due process. He was convicted and sentenced to an overall period of 10 years' imprisonment (10 years and two years concurrent).

Mr Ashoori is one of a few known British Iranian prisoners detained in Iran. It is thought that the Iranian regime is taking hostages as a means of pressuring the UK government to repay its £400 million debt to Iran, which the defence secretary, Ben Wallace, recently acknowledged.

Our legal team, acting for Mr Ashoori, sought diplomatic protection as one of their key initial priorities. We also requested that the government treated Mr Ashoori's case as being as high on its priority list as other dual national hostages, and for the government to expressly include Mr Ashoori in any UK-Iran negotiations and deals.

BBC News reports:

His family said his freedom had been "a long time coming" and thanked all who helped bring him home.

The family added: "1,672 days ago our family's foundations were rocked when our father and husband was unjustly detained and taken away from us.

"Now, we can look forward to rebuilding those same foundations with our cornerstone back in place."

Ms Truss said: "We have the deepest admiration for the resolve, courage and determination Nazanin, Anoosheh and Morad, and their families, have shown.

"They have faced hardship that no family should ever experience and this is a moment of great relief."

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he was "delighted" the pair could be reunited with their families after years in detention.