TEHRAN, Iran—Iran announced indictments Monday for three dual nationals and a Lebanese man who remain detained months after the nuclear deal with world powers, showing the influence hard-liners still wield despite the landmark accord.
The four, who have ties to Britain, Canada and the United States, all are believed to have been detained by Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, a force charged with ensuring the country’s Islamic government remains in power.
The charges they face remain unclear, though the husband of one of them says his family was told by the Guard that she would be released if the British government agreed to their demands, suggesting they may be pawns in a negotiation yet to come.
Iran’s official judiciary news agency Mizan quoted Tehran’s prosecutor, Abbas Jafari Dowlatabadi, naming the four charged as:
— Homa Hoodfar , an Iranian–Canadian woman who is a retired professor at Montreal’s Concordia University;
— Siamak Namazi , an Iranian–American businessman who has advocated for closer ties between the two countries and whose father is also held in Tehran;
— Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe , an Iranian–British woman who works for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of the news agency; and
— Nizar Zakka, a U.S. permanent resident from Lebanon who has done work for the American government .
The four were arrested in connection with separate cases over the past year. Family members and representatives of the four say they did nothing wrong.
Dowlatabadi’s statement did not elaborate on the charges, though Iranian media previously accused Zaghari-Ratcliffe of plotting a “soft toppling” of the government and alleged that Zakka was a spy. He said another seven people faced charges related to the unrest that surrounded the country’s disputed 2009 presidential election.
