British couple detained in Iranian prison fear they are ‘sitting ducks’ after fellow inmates are executed | World News

A British couple detained in Iran fear for their lives following the routine executions of fellow inmates and brutal fights regularly breaking out in the prison where they are being held.

Lindsay and Craig Foreman, both aged 53, from East Sussex, were sentenced to 10 years in February after ​Iranian authorities accused them of spying for Britain and Israel.

They were arrested in January 2025 while travelling through the country on an around-the-world motorcycle trip from Europe to Australia.

Both have been locked up inside Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison, where British-Iranian Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was held for five years, and say they have been kept in squalid conditions while forced to wait months for basic medical treatment.

They deny the Iranian allegations, with Ms Foreman describing the charges in an diary entry as “a joke; lies and nonsense”.

“I am dealing with the realisation that we are likely to be here for a long time yet,” Ms Foreman said, as she spoke of brutal conditions in her women’s dormitory, surrounded by inmates on death row.

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Since the US and Israel launched airstrikes on Iran in February, the couple said they are a “life-threatening situation” as the jail is in an active war zone.

Previously it was hit by Israeli rockets on 23 June last year, killing at least 80 people, including one child and eight women, the day before a ceasefire ended a 12-day war with Iran.

Mr Foreman told how four of his cellmates have been executed during his time in detention.

He described a pattern in which prisoners are told they have a family visit, then are taken away and killed – with their deaths confirmed the following day when their faces appear on prison television.

These inmates were said to have been executed for reasons such as, having a business connection with an American company, and another in which two WhatsApp messages were sent to the wrong recipient.

Fights between inmates, some carrying makeshift weapons, are a regular feature of his wing, which houses prisoners of multiple nationalities, he said.

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In a defiant message to the British government, he said: “We are innocent people. We have committed no offence. Just take action. Speak out. Get us out. It seems to me we’re sitting here like sitting ducks.”

Ms Foreman is held separately in a women’s dormitory, with her diary painting a stark picture of poor sanitation, scarce food, and a near-total absence of medical care.

As the only non-Iranian woman in her wing, she described growing hostility: “People say, ‘Why is your government not doing more?'”

Other fellow inmates include protesters and religious minorities imprisoned for offences that “we cannot comprehend in the life we lead in a free country”.

Ms Foreman takes part in a weekly hunger strike in protest at ongoing executions as she continues to record entries in her diary.

She writes of repurposing the previous evening’s prison meal as the next day’s lunch, stretching what she has.

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Communication with their son Joe Bennett was cut off entirely for seven months, with contact now through monitored phone calls.

“Those challenges that seem insignificant outside are massively important here,” she said.

In March, in her first interview since the US and Israel launched strikes against Iran on 28 February, she described prisoners “hyperventilating” and “screaming” when bombs were going off in the first four nights of the war.

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Ms Foreman’s most recent contact with the British Ambassador “left her without optimism”, her family said.

The couple’s latest revelations follow a statement by UK Middle East minister Hamish Falconer, who told Parliament recently that the couple were “innocent tourists”, intensifying calls for urgent diplomatic intervention.

In his second call with the couple this year, the British ambassador to Iran, Hugo Shorter, advised them to prepare for a prolonged period of detention – a message their family describes as “deeply alarming” given how long they have already served in prison.

The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) described the jail sentences the pair received as “completely appalling and totally unjustifiable” – saying their welfare is a “priority” for the government.

But the family argues that the UK government’s acknowledgment of the couple’s innocence must be matched by stronger action and are calling on the UK’s foreign secretary to raise the case directly and publicly with Iranian authorities.

They also urge ministers to move beyond private diplomacy to sustained public pressure, and international partners to coordinate efforts to secure the couple’s release.

The Foreign Office has been approached for comment.