A student who survived torture and imprisonment in Iran at the same time as Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has fulfilled her dream of studying at Oxford University.
Ana Diamond was 19 and visiting her grandparents when she was arrested in the early morning in 2016 .
Ms Diamond, now 24, said: “ I was stopped by a van full of Revolutionary Guards. They pushed me into the van and pressed my head between my knees to block my vision of my surroundings.
Ana Diamond after her release
“That same day, I was taken to court, and later that day, to prison.”
She spent over 200 days in solitary confinement in a small concrete box in Tehran’s Evin prison in the same block as Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe.
There Ms Diamond was blindfolded and subjected to brutal interrogations.
She recalled: “One of the interrogators was incredibly aggressive, throwing items at me, punching the air next to my ear, and punching the wall to my right.
“He would make me listen to the woeful wailings of a woman whom he then claimed to be my mother. I was made to listen to gunshots and people being shot at, screaming.
Ana Diamond at Conservative HQ with Boris Johnson during the London Mayoral election - one of the pictures used as supposed evidence of spying
“Their intentions were to coerce a false confession out of me, where I would 'admit' to spying for MI6.”
Now, however, Ms Diamond has defied her captors and managed to rebuild her life.
She is celebrating having achieved a first from King's College London and been awarded a full scholarship to study for a postgraduate degree in modern Persian studies at Balliol College.
She said: “I am forever indebted to the Clarendon Fund, the Rhodes Trust and Sir Terry Waite CBE for believing in my potential and investing in me.
“Being awarded a full scholarship to the University of Oxford is beyond anything I could have imagined, but I am also aware that with great opportunity comes great responsibility.
“I now have a duty to my people and to my country to use my experience for progress and to serve with purpose, and I really hope I can fulfil that.”
Ms Diamond’s ordeal started in 2015 when upon landing in Iran, her passports, laptop and phone were seized by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.
On her computer they found pictures of her as a Young Conservative with Boris Johnson and David Cameron among others and used this supposed evidence to charge her with spying.
She was sentenced to death.
In January 2018 Ms Diamond was finally acquitted following a visit to Iran by Boris Johnson, who was then foreign secretary.
She was given an emergency passport and fled the country.
However, the trauma has left her with a chronic heart condition and PTSD.
When Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who is still under house arrest, was brought to Evin, Ms Diamond was still in solitary confinement.
“I believe this was done deliberately to prevent two British dual nationals accused of the same crimes from exchanging their stories,” she said.
“For the most part, Nazanin and I were completely cut off from the outside world.
She said: “In our latest communication, Nazanin said that she had heard of my story - she feels we share a same story of injustice.”
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