Two detained British-Iranians Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anousheh Ashouri are heading to Tehran airport to leave the country, their lawyer Hojjat Kermani says.

Their departure comes as Tehran and London press on with talks about a long-standing £400 million ($725 million) debt owed to Iran.

“Both of them are on their way to the airport in Tehran to leave Iran,” Mr Kermani said. Iran’s judiciary officials were not available to comment.

Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe, an aid worker, had had her British passport returned, British politician Tulip Siddiq said on Tuesday.

Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a project manager with the Thomson Reuters Foundation, was arrested at a Tehran airport in April 2016 and later convicted by an Iranian court of plotting to overthrow the clerical establishment.

Her family and the foundation, a charity that operates independently of Thomson Reuters and its news subsidiary Reuters, deny the charge.

Mr Ashouri was sentenced to 10 years in jail in 2019 for spying for Israel’s Mossad and two years for “acquiring illegitimate wealth”, according to Iran’s judiciary.

-Reuters