Foundation worker's jail term upheld in Iran

An appeals court confirmed the sentence, Iran's judiciary spokesman said on Sunday. Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei said the term had been upheld.

"The five-year prison verdict against the security defendant Nazanin Zaghari has been finalised," the judiciary's website Mizan quoted Ejei as telling a weekly news conference.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe, 38, has dual Iranian-British citizenship. She was detained in early April as she tried to leave Iran after visiting her parents with her daughter, Gabriella, now two. Her family said in September that a Revolutionary Court had handed down the sentence on undisclosed charges.

Iran's Revolutionary Guards had accused her of trying to overthrow the clerical establishment, but the official charges against her were not made public.

Ejei also said Farhad Abd-Saleh was handed a five-year sentence on appeal on security charges, without elaborating. Iranian authorities have given few details about Abd-Saleh, who was named in October along with five others, some of them Iranian dual nationals, who had been sentenced to 10 years in jail for "espionage and collaborating with the American government". ■