THERE were emotional scenes at RAF Brize Norton in the early hours of last Thursday, as Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe – the wife of Farnham man Richard Ratcliffe – arrived back on British soil after six years of detention in Iran.

Elika Ashoori, whose dad Anoosheh was also released by Iran on Wednesday, posted a live video to her Instagram feed of the moment her father and Nazanin stepped off the plane and were reunited with their families shortly after 1am on March 17.

The heart-warming footage includes the moment Nazanin’s seven-year-old daughter Gabriella and husband Richard rush to greet Nazanin at the RAF base.

Other posts on social media in the early hours of Thursday showed Nazanin, 43, and Anoosheh, 67, on their flights, first from the Iranian capital Tehran to Muscat in Oman on an Omani government plane, and then from Oman to RAF Brize Norton.

These were then followed by the joyous scenes as they were greeted by their friends, families and foreign secretary Liz Truss once back in the UK.

Nazanin then spoke publicly for the first time about her ordeal, alongside her husband, on Monday – telling a press conference it should never have taken the government so long to secure her release from prison in Iran.

She said she had been overwhelmed with emotion to be reunited with her husband and daughter – but added: “What’s happened now should have happened six years ago.”

Nazanin’s release – coming six years after her arrest on spurious spying charges in 2016 – came after the UK government paid a £400million arms debt to Iran dating back to the 1970s.

Addressing the media in Westminster, she thanked all those who had worked to secure her release, and paid tribute to her “amazing, wonderful” husband after his tireless six-year campaign.

Nazanin also thanked her daughter “for being very, very patient with mummy”.

But she took issue with the government for the length of time taken to negotiate her release, saying: “I have seen five foreign secretaries change over the course of six years. How many foreign secretaries does it take for someone to come home?”