Charlie Peters

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe's release, alongside fellow prisoner Anoosheh Ashoori, has attracted enormous amounts of praise and joy at a time when the news has felt like a relentless stream of misery. How could you feel anything other than joy at the release of a young mother after six years away from her child? These freed Britons have endured an unimaginable plight, suffering horrific conditions in one of the world’s most notorious dictatorships.  But when these outpourings of relief and jubilation pass, a serious reckoning over how the Foreign Office secured their release must take place.

Putin’s forces are currently steamrolling Ukraine’s defences, with Russian troops circling the capital and invading from the south and east of the country. Meanwhile European leaders, neutered by their military weakness, have been unable to do little more than offer pointless sanctions and statements of solidarity. As Russian troops streamed across the border, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen condemned the ‘unprecedented military aggression.’ When the Kremlin moved to recognise the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts as independent states, the response in Brussels was to pass a fresh package of sanctions.

Ever since British jihadists flocked to join Isis in Iraq and Syria, the government has attempted to keep the terrorists away by killing them on the battlefield and stripping the survivors of their citizenship. Those who have slipped through the net and made it back home have faced mandatory deradicalisation programs, or – in the most extreme cases – constant surveillance. But this costly, ineffective strategy has prioritised the rights and freedoms of returning jihadists over the safety of innocent people. And the approach is now likely to face another test, as the 425 or so Isis fighters and spouses who have returned are expected to be joined by their former twisted comrades, who have had their hopes of freedom in Britain bolstered by a recent High Court ruling.

What's the problem with the Runnymede Trust? More than a dozen Tory MPs have written to the Charity Commission demanding an investigation into the charity. They claim that the self-described 'UK's leading independent race equality think tank' criticised the recent Downing Street-backed report into race relations 'in bad faith'. The MPs, including Edward Leigh, Sally-Ann Hart and Imran Ahmad Khan, claim that the Trust was 'pursuing a political agenda'. Runnymede has hit back hard. 'The Trust regrets the recent trend for politicians to forsake dialogue and simply file complaints against charities whose efforts to address and challenge racism they contest,' the charity said in a statement.