Husband of Charity Worker Arrested in Iran Pleads For Safe Return of His Wife and One-Year-Old Daughter

May 10, 2016 02:20 PM EDT

Iran detained a worker of a charity institution in the United Kingdom for "national security reasons", but since the April 3 arrest, it has not filed a complaint against her.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, 37, is held in a solitary cell in an unknown location in Kerman Province, 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) south of Tehran. She was at the airport with her one-year-old daughter on their way to board a plane back to the United Kingdom after a two-week holiday visit in her relatives when accosted by the military.

She has been deprived of the right to talk to a lawyer or anyone, or make outside calls. Not even the International Committee of the Red Cross has able to reach her.

Richard, her husband, is pleading UK Prime Minister David Cameron to use the newly strengthened ties between the West and Iran to overturn her "outrageous and arbitrary" detention and bring back his family.

He said even the passport of his 22-month old daughter Gabriella had been confiscated disallowing her to leave Iran. The infant is now under the care of her Iranian grandparents.

"A young mum and her baby can be treated as some sort of national security threat? That's very absurd, and worst she was forced to sign a confession under duress," Richard said.

Nazanin is with the Thomson Reuters Foundation, a charity organization operating independently from Reuters News, as a project coordinator.

Officials of the Iranian Mission to the United Nationals and its Embassy in London refused to give statements about the case.

"Nazanin is a kind, caring and very sociable person, a lovely and loving wife and mother, and it breaks her heart to be away from her daughter," Richard said

Richard's mother, Barbara, said they were given false hope that Nazanin would be detained for only a couple of days, and it was a month ago and still no Naz.

"The whole family is frantically worried about her safety," she said.