A CHARITY worker with ties to Farnham has lost her final appeal to overturn a five-year prison sentence in her native Iran.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, whose husband Richard grew up in Farnham, was arrested at Tehran Airport in April 2016 while visiting family with her daughter Gabriella.

On Monday the 38 year old’s final appeal against her conviction for allegedly plotting to overthrow the Iranian government was rejected by Iran’s supreme court.

The official charges against Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliff, who works for charity the Thomson Reuters Foundation and denies any wrong-doing, have never been made public.

Speaking from the UK in the wake of the appeal decision, Nazanin’s husband said there were no more legal options to overturn the sentence and called on the British government to do more to help his wife.

Mr Ratcliffe said: “We’ve had a year, the legal process is finished, so I think the British government needs to step up, find a way to visit her, say that she’s innocent and call for her release publicly.

“As her husband, I can say Nazanin is innocent until I am blue in the face. I have spent a year doing it. But it makes a clear difference that the government hasn’t. It indulges the whispers.”

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office said it is “deeply concerned” by the latest Iranian supreme court decision.