LONDON: The family of Anoosheh Ashoori said they struggled to garner media and public attention during his Iranian imprisonment because they were not seen as 鈥渧ery relatable.鈥�

Ashoori was released from detention on Wednesday along with Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe after years behind bars. 

Unlike Ashoori, the detention of mother-of-one Zaghari-Ratcliffe attracted global media attention.

Elika Ashoori told BBC Radio 4 that the family had experienced an 鈥渙utpouring of love鈥� since her father鈥檚 return, but said the last five years of his captivity had been very different.

鈥淚t has been a very big struggle trying to get my dad鈥檚 name out there,鈥� she said. 鈥淲e were slightly more successful in the last year of our campaign because of the efforts of Amnesty and other organizations that finally joined us.

鈥淏ut, because of his name, age, his looks, us being grown-up children, and us not being very relatable, so we couldn鈥檛 really engage on a major scale with the media and public no matter how hard we tried.

鈥淏ut regardless of that we have succeeded because he was included in the deal, so I think despite all that hardship we managed to strike a chord and keep his name out there and keep the momentum going for him to be included in the deal.鈥�

Ashoori was arrested in 2017 in Iran and accused of spying for Israel.

The release of Ashoori and Zaghari-Ratcliffe was tied to the payment of a decades-old debt of nearly 拢400 million ($526 million), related to an arms deal with Iran鈥檚 pre-revolutionary government.

Elika said the family would always wonder if he could have been brought home sooner.

鈥淥f course, there鈥檚 always that question which is something we will obviously be continuing to campaign for once we鈥檝e regrouped, because he wasn鈥檛 the only one and Nazanin wasn鈥檛 the only one taken through hostage diplomacy.

"The debt being paid has managed to bring my dad and Nazanin home but there are also others, there are dual nationals still being detained. Until we get to the root cause of this problem we can鈥檛 prevent cases to happen in the future.鈥�

She also warned that one paid debt would not prevent Iran from employing the same 鈥渂arbaric鈥� tactic in the future.

鈥淚t鈥檚 OK to point fingers and say the blame is with this government or that government 鈥� at the end of the day we are the collateral damage. By paying one debt we鈥檙e not solving the issue. We have to get to the root cause of the problem and see why is it the world is allowing this barbaric practice to continue.鈥�

She added that her father was extremely angry with the Iranian government for the way he had been treated.