NAZANIN Zaghari-Ratcliffe has been freed from detention in Iran, and has started the long journey back to the UK.

This afternoon, it has been confirmed that British-Iranian nationals Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori are on a plane leaving Iran after being freed.

Confirmation of this has come from the government.

It will bring to a close six years of agony for Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe and her family, including her sister-in-law, who is a GP in Cwmbran.

She was accused of plotting to overthrow Iran’s government in 2016, which she denied.

Today’s major development comes as the government has said that they have settled a debt owed to Iran from the 1970s.

In the last hour, a plane, understood to be carrying Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe, departed Tehran for Muscat, the capital of Oman.

From here, she is set to board a plane which will take her to RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire.

The initial flight out of Tehran is being tracked on popular flight tracking website FlightRadar 24, and can be tracked here.

At around 3.20pm, the aircraft, a Gulfstream III jet, reached Oman, ahead of a scheduled landing time of 3.30pm UK time.

According to tracking data, the aircraft, which travelled without a publicly available callsign, is registered to the Royal Air Force of Oman.

Worldwide, it is the eighth most tracked flight today (March 16).

It is not currently known at what time the second leg of the journey will be made.