(Adds British lawmaker, background)
DUBAI, April 26 (Reuters) - An Iranian Revolutionary court
has sentenced British-Iranian aid worker Nazanin
Zaghari-Ratcliffe to a one-year jail term and she is banned from
leaving the country for a year, her lawyer told a news website
on Monday.
"Nazanin Zaghari was sentenced to one year in prison and a
one year ban from leaving the country on charges of propaganda
against the Islamic Republic," Hojjat Kermani told the Emtedad
site.
Iran's judiciary was not immediately available to comment.
"I don't think it's right at all that Nazanin should be
sentenced to any more time in jail," British Prime Minister
Boris Johnson told reporters, adding that London was working
with the United States on dual-nationals jailed in Iran.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a project manager with the Thomson
Reuters Foundation charity, was arrested at a Tehran airport in
April 2016 and later convicted of plotting to overthrow the
clerical establishment.
She was released from house arrest last month at the end of
a five-year sentence, but immediately ordered back into court to
face the new propaganda charges.
Lawmaker Tulip Siddiq, who represents Zaghari-Ratcliffe's
north London constituency, said the latest news was "absolutely
devastating", adding on Twitter that it was "another abusive use
of her as a bargaining chip."
Kermani said he would appeal the new sentence within 21 days
under Iranian law.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe's family and the foundation, a charity
that operates independently of media firm Thomson Reuters and
its news subsidiary Reuters, deny the charges.
She spent four years in jail before being released into
house arrest in March 2020 during the coronavirus.
Her family says Zaghari-Ratcliffe is being used as a
bargaining chip by Tehran, including over hundreds of millions
of dollars owed for an arms order which Britain took payment for
in the 1970s and never delivered.
Britain is also a party to Iran's 2015 nuclear deal, which
the United States quit in 2018 and which Tehran and European
countries want to revive. Iran says Zaghari-Ratcliffe's case is
not linked to any international negotiations.
"This is a totally inhumane and wholly unjustified
decision," British foreign minister Dominic Raab said in a
statement, urging her release.
(Reporting by Parisa Hafezi in Dubai and William James in
London;
Writing by Parisa Hafezi and Peter Graff;
Editing by Andrew Cawthorne)