Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has UK passport returned, MP says

British-Iranian detainee Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has had her UK passport returned, her MP has said.

She has been detained in Iran for more than five years on spying charges.

Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe was arrested there in 2016 while taking the couple's daughter, Gabriella, to see her family, and was accused of plotting to overthrow the government.

Tulip Siddiq said Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe was still at her family home in the Iranian capital of Tehran.

She said British negotiators were also in the city.

According to Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe's employer, the Thomson Reuters Foundation, her lawyer Hojjat Kermani, when asked whether she would be released, said: "I am hopeful that we will have good news soon."

A £400 million debt relating to a cancelled order for 1,500 Chieftain tanks dating back to the 1970s had been linked to the continued detention of Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe and other UK-Iranian dual nationals held in the country - although the government has said the two issues should not be linked.

Mr Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who has always denied the charges against her, was first jailed for five years in 2016 after being accused of plotting against the regime. She was sentenced to another year's confinement in April 2021 on charges of "spreading propaganda".