FORMER Farnham resident Richard Ratcliffe has stepped up the pressure last week for the government to secure the release of his wife Nazanin from jail in Iran.

Mr Ratcliffe joined Kamran Foroughi, who has also conducted a high-profile campaign to release his father, Kamal, from an Iranian jail, to hand in a 72,000-signature Amnesty petition at the Foreign Office calling on the Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson to prioritise both cases.

Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe, 37, was sentenced to five years in prison last month following a conviction on unspecified “national security-related” offences after standing trial before a Revolutionary Court in the Tehran.

The charity worker was arrested at Tehran Airport on April 3 with her 22-month-old daughter Gabriella. She was initially held in solitary confinement and denied access to either a lawyer or her family. She was later the subject of a series of statements from the Iranian authorities suggesting she was involved in espionage.

Amnesty International has described her case as a “travesty of justice throughout”.

Her husband, who grew up in Ewshot, attended school at St George’s in Castle Street and played for Farnham Rugby club, has been campaigning for her release ever since. Gabriella is currently being cared for by Nazanin’s parents in Iran.

Amnesty activists, including Amnesty International UK director Kate Allen, accompanied the two men when they handed the petition in.

Amnesty International UK’s Individuals At Risk campaign manager Kathy Voss said: “There’s been a lot of talk recently about ‘thawing relations’ between the UK and Iran, but these two cases lend the lie to that.

“It looks very much like Nazanin and Kamal are being treated like pawns by the Iranian authorities and we’d like to see the UK seriously raising its game over securing proper justice for these British nationals.

“Boris Johnson needs to make sure these two cases are right near the top of his in-tray. We can’t let this drop.”