Summary
What’s the key to bringing home Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the British woman who has been held hostage in Iran for almost six years? And how closely linked is Nazanin’s release to a tank deal debt more than 40 years old?
In episode 1 of Nazanin, former Today programme editor, Ceri Thomas, explores the origins of the debt, the apparent corruption which surrounded the deal which created it, and its long, difficult legacy. It’s a story which begins in the freewheeling 1970s when the need to ‘grease the wheels’ of big arms deals seemed barely controversial, and when the Shah of Iran and a notorious middleman known around Whitehall as ‘Mr 1%’ were able to pocket millions in commissions paid by the UK. And it leads back to the fate of more than one hostage today.
Presenter: Ceri Thomas Producer: Matt Russell Original music: Tom Kinsella A Tortoise Media production for BBC Radio 4
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This was an impregnable fortress. The only way you get out was in a wooden box. |
| 0:05.0 | The controversial maximum security prison impossible to escape from. |
| 0:09.0 | And one of the duties of a political prisoner is the escape. |
| 0:12.0 | The IRA inmates who found a way. of a political prisoner is the escape. |
| 0:12.5 | The IRA inmates who found a way. |
| 0:14.5 | I'm Carlo Gableer and I'll be navigating a path |
| 0:19.5 | through the disturbing inside story of the biggest jailbreak in British and Irish history. |
| 0:25.0 | The narrative that they want is that this is a big achievement by them. |
| 0:28.5 | Escape from the maze, listen first on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:35.0 | BBC Sounds. |
| 0:34.0 | BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts. |
| 0:39.0 | Hello, I'm Kerry Thomas and this is seriously from BBC Radio 4. |
| 0:44.0 | You're listening to Nazanine Episode 1. |
| 0:48.2 | All of our lives have played out in front of a backdrop of world events. And mostly, unless you're one of those rare people who |
| 0:55.5 | wants to be a player, we don't touch them much and they don't touch us. Once in a while of course things change. There's a war, a great depression or a pandemic and it's as if the scenery steps forward and engulfs us. |
| 1:11.0 | All of us all together. |
| 1:13.2 | But if we're lucky for most of our time on earth |
| 1:19.0 | we're out there on our own small stage |
| 1:21.6 | and the great events of the day are playing on a newsreel way behind us. |
| 1:28.7 | Not everyone is lucky. There's been a way in which our world has gone through the looking glass. |
| 1:35.0 | Sometimes the world seems to reach out and snatch one of us, just one at random, |
| 1:41.0 | and tears that life to shreds. |
... |
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