The son of a British woman who has been held in Iran since January on espionage charges along with her husband has told the Guardian he lived with the agony of not knowing their whereabouts for a month or in the past fortnight whether they had been killed in the Israeli bombing on Tehran’s Evin prison on 23 June that left more than 70 dead.
Lindsay and Craig Foreman, both 52, were arrested on 3 January in Kervan City in southern Iran while travelling through the country from Armenia to Pakistan on a motorcycle journey to Australia. The Foreign Office were informed they were due to be taken to Tehran on around 8 June, raising fears they may have been caught in the Tehran attack, but on Tuesday they were informed they were still held in Kervan.
Joe Bennett, 31, said: “Every day not knowing brought a deeper kind of dread. Every night, the same questions with no answers. You go to sleep, afraid. You wake up still afraid. And the silence – the not knowing – is just unbearable. So many of our fears remain. How are they doing? Are they being looked after? How are they coping psychologically?
“Our belief is that Lindsay and Craig will be much safer when people know they’re there. Every piece of information we’ve received points to visibility as their greatest protection, when there are eyes on them, that’s when they’re safest. It took a lot of soul searching, but this isn’t about recklessness; it’s about responsibility. We’ve had to weigh risk and reward carefully, but we’re convinced that the best way to safeguard them is to ensure the British public cares and is paying attention. Silence puts them at greater risk. Awareness saves lives.”
He added: “Our biggest message is that we want to work with the UK government on their release, but because there is no noise around my mum and Craig, when Keir Starmer is around the table with the Iranians they are not going to be mentioned. We cannot operate in darkness, and we have to bring their names into the sunlight.”
So far British officials have visited the couple in detention three times, but UK diplomats are only now returning to Iran after the 12-day war between Israel and Iran. Bennett said he understood his mother and Craig were both suffering from the food and sleeping conditions.
He said “On the first visit Craig had lost a lot of weight and she was in OK spirits. The second visit was very chaotic and short. It lasted only nine minutes and it ended very abruptly. My mum was struggling with sleeping on a wafer-thin mattress. Craig was still thin, but he was mainly concerned about my mum.
“The third visit was more positive; they had been allowed to be together and had access to the prison shop. They were in a room the equivalent of three by three. For any exercise they just did a figure of eight so they could run 5km like that. They get access to a yard for 15 minutes.
“They had a metal bed with a mattress. The feeling last month was that this was moving towards sentencing or trial in that they had been appointed a lawyer, but he did not speak English so it was very very hard to communicate with him.
“We have sent some personal messages to my mum via the Foreign Office. I relayed a message to her that I am looking at the moon at night and that if she looks at the moon as well, we will be sharing that experience and have a connection. It gives me hope and maybe it gives her some hope.”
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who spent six years in an Iranian jail and has advised the family, recalled: “The cell had tall walls and cold floor. There was no bed but only a thin blanket. I didn’t shower for days as I wasn’t allowed to leave the cell. The walls were towering and the constant light in the cell was blinding. I was terrified, lost and emotionally traumatised.”
Bennett said of Lindsay and Craig: “They are not tied to any political party, or a government, they are not criminals and they are certainly not spies. They are just two human beings, normal, normal people. It is a mum and a dad, a son and a sister. They love travelling, they love people, they love connection.”
Asked if they should have followed UK Foreign Office advice not to travel to Iran, he said: “They were two people in the wrong place at the wrong time, pawns in something geopolitical. History shows that theirs is not the first case and the only crime is that they are UK nationals.
“It’s quite obvious it is hostage-taking for leverage on the UK government, and they do it to other countries, like France. We don’t know what the Iranians want. At the end of all of this, there is a deal to be done and it will be the Foreign Office that are the ones that make it. We are just here to make it happen as efficiently as possible.
“It’s been tough; whatever you do in life cannot prepare you for this, there is such a sense of powerlessness, and elderly relatives to look after.
“They are pretty strong-headed people. My mum is very much into positive psychology and Craig is very practical. They are together and they have that solace, but we don’t know. There may be panic and fear, and that is why it is so important we get their names out there so they know they have not been forgotten.”
A spokesperson for the Iranian judiciary, Asghar Jahangir, said at the time of the arrest that the couple, married nine years and living recently in Spain, had “entered Iran under the guise of tourists” and “gathered information in multiple provinces of the country”.
