Nazanin: Thomson Reuters management should be ashamed

Thomson Reuters corporation is demonstrating appalling social and human responsibility by failing to speak up for Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British citizen jailed on trumped-up charges by the Iranian government.

Held since being suddenly seized and separated from her infant daughter and husband in early 2016, Nazanin has been completely ignored by the chairman of Thomson Reuters, David Thomson; the chief executive officer Jim Smith, and Reuters News editor-in-chief Stephen Adler, who has had no trouble speaking out for Reuters news staff held in similarly questionable or fraudulent ways.

Nazanin is an employee of the Thomson Reuters Foundation, partly funded and supplied services by Thomson Reuters. Hiding behind the arms-length relationship required to sustain a non-governmental charitable arm does not absolve the corporation and its executives of their duty to her.

In poor health as a result of her incarceration, Nazanin has been used as a political tool by Iranian politicians. They have added emotional abuse with repeated suggestions of release followed by new extensions of incarceration in the notorious Kerman Central Prison.

The British government and others have come to her support, but Thomson Reuters management remains silent. 

The company’s employees, shareholders and clients need to hold them to account - at the very least on simple humanitarian grounds. Moreover, they should be personally ashamed. ■