April 2, 2014
A British woman has been locked up in Iran for five months after posting derogatory comments about the country’s government on Facebook and fears she will be executed, her husband has said. Roya Saberi Negad Nobakht, 47, from Stockport has been charged with “insulting Islamic sanctities”, a crime which can be punishable by death. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) said it was “urgently” looking into her case. However, Britain currently has no embassy in Iran, making any negotiations more difficult.
Mr Taghipoor, who is currently in Iran, claimed that his wife’s arrest was over comments she had made on a Facebook group about the government being “too Islamic”, and that she had only been charged after a confession was extracted from her “under duress”. Facebook declined to comment. She is believed to have been detained ahead of a trial at Evin prison in Tehran, which is notorious both for its harsh conditions and for its housing of political prisoners.
Mrs Nobakht’s situation came to light after her husband approached his friend and former employer Nasser Homayoun-Fekri, who also lives in Stockport, who wrote a letter to his local MP Andrew Stunell.
