Ana Diamond

Ana Diamond (born August 1996) is an Iranian and British political commentator and human rights advocate who is one of the founding members of The Alliance Against State Hostage Taking. The organization was formally founded in New York on 24 September 2019.

Diamond rose to public eye following a false lawsuit brought against her by the Islamic Republic of Iran in 2014 during which she was wrongly accused of espionage for the United Kingdom, United States, and a number of Western intelligence firms. She denied the allegations throughout. Her arrest, similar to the arrest of numerous other dual-nationals, has been linked to the long-standing dispute of estimated £400m between Islamic Republic of Iran and United Kingdom. In recent years, Iran's behaviour and violation of human rights have been described as hostage diplomacy.

Early life and education
Diamond was born in Sir, West Azerbaijan and moved to Finland with her parents when she was a toddler and went to Ressu International Baccalaureate School in Helsinki. She studied Film and Media Studies and Theology at King's College London. Though she was born in Iran and later obtained a temporary Iranian passport in order to visit her relatives in 2014, she is of British descent and held British and Finnish citizenships. Diamond's paternal great grandparents were English missionaries who traveled to Iran in the 19th century. They settled in Urmia, Iran, home to one of the earliest Christian churches, the Assyrian Church of the East, and the site of the first American Christian mission in Iran in 1835.

Arrest and detention in Iran
Prior to travelling to Iran, Diamond took part in the University of California Education Abroad Program while still a student. Shortly after, she took on a filming project made possible in Jerusalem to document the life in the Old City. This, in addition to her involvement with the Conservatives when she was a teen, were used by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp to justify her initial travel ban and detention.

She was formally arrested with her parents in January 2016. For the next eight months, she was subjected to extensive interrogations while held in solitary confinement in Evin prison. Diamond was briefly transferred to the public ward, along with Narges Mohammadi and Atena Farghadani. At the time, Diamond was the youngest female inmate in Evin prison and one of the few dual-nationals to experience a mock execution. Diamond has described her treatment as "demeaning" and as "torture", and her case has been reported to the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention and United Nations Human Rights Council.

Unlike most political and national security prisoners, Diamond was tried at the Special Clerical Court due to her family's clerical background. Her primary prosecutor was Ebrahim Raisi, who later became the eighth and current president of Iran since 3 August 2021.

Release
In August 2016, Diamond was released on bail pending trial in excess of what would have been £130,000 at the time. She was placed under house arrest while her father was still imprisoned.

In written evidence submitted to the UK Foreign Affairs Select Committee in April 2022, it was stated that the family's £5.5 million worth of property and assets were confiscated by the IRGC in Iran prior to their release.

Following the first official visit to Iran by the British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson in late 2017, charges against Diamond were dropped and she was able to leave Iran by May 2018.

Health issues
Since her return to the UK, Diamond has been open about the psychological trauma inflicted on her and the physical harm she suffered during her detention, including arrhythmia.

She considers herself a torture survivor.

When speaking with the i newspaper, she said:

"The realisation that you might be taken and killed at any minute is very sobering, and in a way has been a pivotal factor in how I’ve been able to bounce forward [...] I have this renewed sense of ‘I need to make the most of my life’ because I almost lost it."

Scholarship to University of Oxford
Diamond is a mentee of Terry Waite, an envoy for the Church of England and a former hostage negotiator. Waite was himself a hostage in Lebanon for five years, and helped Diamond to recover from her ordeal following her release. “The most important thing he taught me was that I should try to use this time of imprisonment creatively and look at it as something that strengthens my character," she has said of her mentor.

She has stated that Waite played a significant role in her recovery and helped her regain her confidence.

In 2021, Diamond was accepted to study at Balliol College, Oxford with a scholarship. She announced on Twitter that she was a 2021 finalist for the Rhodes Scholarship from the Global category.

In a feature on The Oxford Student, she was quoted describing her time at Oxford as, "Oxford helped me realise that even if you cannot achieve full justice, you can try to prevent injustice – with your work, words, advocacy, and presence. We must make our existence in this world worthwhile, and what better place to start that journey than at university."

In an interview with Emma Barnett of the BBC Woman's Hour, Diamond spoke about her experience by quoting the French novelist André Malraux: "None of us walk through hell and come back empty handed."

Activism
In September 2019, Diamond became one of the founding members of The Alliance Against State Hostage Taking, alongside Richard Ratcliffe, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe's husband, Jason Rezaian, and Nizar Zakka. The Alliance was launched at the 74th United Nations General Assembly in New York City in 2019. She has also worked closely with Freedom from Torture and Hostage UK in understanding the trauma of returning hostages and their rights to demand enforceable reparation, including restitution, compensation, and rehabilitation.

Since the launch of the Alliance, Diamond has collaborated on a documentary with BBC Panorama to highlight that the arrest of dual and foreign nationals in Iran is often associated with the aim of extracting money, facilitating prisoner exchanges, lifting of sanctions, repayment of arms debts or other concessions.

Diamond was one of the first individuals to speak out on the inhumane conditions surrounding the arrest of Australian-British academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert.

Following a lengthy but successful campaign for Dr Moore-Gilbert's release, Diamond gave an interview to the Guardian and said that “The Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps have been practising and perfecting their state hostage-taking for many decades now," and that she is advocating for a "legal path to hold Iran accountable for their atrocious violations of human rights and the deliberate and planned acts of kidnapping and torture of foreign nationals."

In July 2020, the UK government announced the launch of new 'Magnitsky'-style sanctions regime to target those who have perpetuated human rights violations and abuses around the world. The Alliance has contributed to the passage of Magnitsky legislation in the UK, designed to provide sanctions against individuals who have committed human rights violations. The laws are named in honour of Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian tax advisor whose exposure of corruption and misconduct in Russia led to his arrest and death in police custody.