An Iranian court has sentenced two British nationals to ten years in prison each on charges of espionage, the couple’s family announced on Thursday, drawing an immediate and sharp rebuke from London as the case entered its most serious phase after more than 13 months of detention.
Craig and Lindsay Foreman, from East Sussex, were arrested on January 3, 2025, while passing through Iran on a round-the-world motorcycle journey. They have consistently denied Tehran’s allegations that they were gathering intelligence. Their family said the couple were informed of the sentence earlier this week.
British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper did not hold back. “This sentence is completely appalling and totally unjustifiable,” she said in a statement Thursday. She pledged that the government would pursue the matter with Iranian authorities without pause, saying the couple’s welfare remained the government’s primary concern. The couple were first detained as they passed through Kerman, in central Iran. Iranian judiciary spokesman Asghar Jahangir alleged last year that the Foremans had entered the country “posing as tourists” and gathered information before their arrest. No independent evidence supporting that claim has been made public.
The trial, held on October 27 last year, lasted three hours. Lindsay’s son, Joe Bennett, said the proceedings offered no meaningful legal recourse.
“My parents have now been sentenced to ten years following a trial that lasted just three hours and in which they were not allowed to present a defence,” he said. He added that the family had seen no evidence to substantiate the espionage charge and expressed serious concern about the opacity of Iran’s judicial process.
The sentence is notably severe, twice the five-year term imposed on Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the British-Iranian dual national whose detention became one of the most protracted and politically charged diplomatic disputes between London and Tehran in recent memory. Zaghari-Ratcliffe and fellow British-Iranian Anoosheh Ashoori were eventually released in March 2022, only after the UK settled a long-standing debt owed to Iran.
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The conditions in which the Foremans have been held have worsened considerably since their arrest. They were initially held for months at Kerman Prison, confined in a cell measuring three metres by three metres with a thin mattress, subsisting largely on rice, fruit, and vegetables as their weight declined. Craig reportedly developed difficulty walking, while Lindsay suffered a back problem. They were permitted to see a doctor only once, and their assigned Iranian attorney did not speak English. They were later transferred to Tehran. Craig was moved to Evin Prison’s political wing, while Lindsay was placed in its women’s section. Evin, which has drawn sustained criticism from international human rights organisations for alleged torture and inhumane conditions, houses journalists, political prisoners, and foreign nationals, many held on security-related charges.
Craig Foreman gave his first public interview from inside prison to ITV News on Thursday, hours before the sentence was formally announced by the family. His message to the British government was unambiguous. “One word would be: ‘help’. Full stop,” he said, speaking over a crackly phone line punctuated by automated messages in Farsi. He described 57 days in solitary confinement. “I was weeping, crying many nights, many days,” he said. “Emotionally and physically, it broke me to pieces.”
He described his cell as “an eight-foot cell with a hole in the floor and a sink,” calling the conditions “disgusting.”
He said the couple were allowed to see one another only once a month, despite their respective prison wings being separated by roughly 70 metres. “For me and for Lindsay, seeing each other is the only thing that’s keeping us going right now,” he said.
Lindsay Foreman, in a brief clip broadcast on Thursday, offered a markedly different register. She said she had travelled to Iran as part of what she described as a global effort to document human connection and shared humanity. “In fact, if anything, my desire to find what connects us is even greater,” she said. She has previously acknowledged that the decision to enter Iran was, in her own words, naive, saying she had believed that valid travel visas and organised escorts would keep them safe.
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A petition carrying 70,000 signatures was delivered to Downing Street last month by Bennett, alongside Anoosheh Ashoori and Richard Ratcliffe, whose own years-long campaign to free his wife Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe became a defining cause in British-Iranian relations. Bennett said the signatures represented a clear public view that the detention was arbitrary. Their lawyers in Iran, according to the family, have found no legal basis for the charges. The case sits within a wider and documented pattern. Iran has arrested dozens of individuals with dual nationality or foreign permanent residency in recent years, mostly on spying and national security charges, with at least 15 having had links to the United Kingdom. Human rights groups say they are often held for leverage and released only when Iran receives something in return. Tehran has consistently rejected that characterisation, maintaining that the cases involve legitimate security proceedings.
The Foreign Office has long advised against all travel to Iran, warning British and British-Iranian dual citizens that having a British passport or any connection to the UK can increase the risk of detention. That advisory was in place before the Foremans entered the country.
The Iranian embassy in London did not respond to requests for comment on Thursday. The couple’s family said they expected further court proceedings in Tehran in the coming days. Bennett said separately that ongoing indirect nuclear talks between the United States and Iran, which concluded this week in Geneva with an agreement on guiding principles according to Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, should also address the situation of foreign detainees. No confirmation of that has come from either negotiating side.