(CNN) – Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the British-Iranian charity worker who has been held in Iran for almost six years, has been released and is at Tehran airport “on her way home,” UK Member of Parliament Tulip Siddiq told CNN on Wednesday.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe was first detained at a Tehran airport in April 2016 following a vacation to see her family with her daughter.
She was accused of working with organizations allegedly attempting to overthrow the Iranian regime and was later convicted and sentenced to five years in jail.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe and her employer, the Thomson Reuters Foundation, have repeatedly denied the espionage charges against her.
In April 2021 she was handed a second jail sentence and travel ban on charges of spreading propaganda against the regime, and lost an appeal on her case in October.
Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency said that Zaghari-Ratcliffe is being transferred to Tehran’s international airport, Imam Khomenei, with a British negotiating team.
On Wednesday, Hojjat Kermani, Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s lawyer, told CNN he does not want to comment on the latest developments for now.
He earlier told Reuters that Zaghari-Ratcliffe and another detained British-Iranian, Anousheh Ashouri, were “on their way to the airport in Tehran to leave Iran.”
