A British couple jailed in Iran say that the war sparked by President Donald Trump has turned their imprisonment from a “challenging situation to a life-threatening situation.”
Craig and Lindsay Foreman, both 53, were arrested by Iranian authorities in January 2025 on espionage charges while they were on a global motorcycle journey. After being held for over a year, they were sentenced to 10 years in prison last month after a “sham trial,” their family said.
In their first public statement since the war began on Feb. 28, Craig said that the lack of support from the British government has made them feel “let down, alone, and completely frustrated.”
“We were charged by some falsified evidence that was fabricated to suit the maximum sentence,” Craig said in a phone call recorded by the couple’s son, Joe Bennett, the audio of which was shared with the BBC. “Our government are fully aware of this information and know we are 100 percent innocent.”
“We are now in prison in a war zone,” he continued. “We have gone from a challenging situation to a life-threatening one. You have chosen to give us zero information on what’s happening to us, what to do, and where to go if the prison doors were to open.”
“It’s very difficult to understand why our innocence has not been said publicly. We are not spies. The charges against us are simply not true.”
The family told the outlet that the couple was not notified when British embassy staff were temporarily moved out of the country last month.
Craig, a carpenter, and Lindsay, a life coach, had traveled to the country despite warnings from the British Foreign Office, though they had valid visas, a pre-approved itinerary, and a licensed tour guide.
The UK’s Foreign Office advises against “all travel to Iran,” saying that “Having a British passport or connections to the UK can be reason enough for the Iranian authorities to detain you.”
Bennett told the BBC that his parents were being held in separate, crowded cells, food was becoming increasingly scarce, and that explosions from U.S-Israeli bombings were close enough to rattle the prison buildings.
He said that his mother was “in pieces” due to the British government’s lack of support in their situation. “She’s gone from always finding the positive to feeling completely lost. The sense that she’s been abandoned by her own government is breaking her.”
“In the past few weeks, I’ve had to have some of the hardest conversations of my life,” he added. “I had to tell my parents they’d been sentenced to 10 years in prison. I had to tell them the British embassy had closed. And I had to tell them that ministers had been advised not to say publicly that they are innocent, or call this what it is: arbitrary detention.”
The Daily Beast reached out to Bennett for comment.
In less than a month, the conflict between the U.S. and Iran has resulted in the deaths of over 1,500 people in Iran, according to the latest figures from the Iranian government.
The fighting has also left 13 American service members dead, along with more than 1,000 people in Lebanon and at least 18 in Israel, according to the latest reports.
On Monday, Trump, 79, announced that the U.S. military would postpone strikes on Iranian power plants for five days, citing “productive conversations” with Iranian authorities. The country rejected his claims, saying, “There is no direct or indirect contact with Trump. He retreated after hearing that our targets would be all power plants in West Asia.”
Trump has been unclear on the timeframe for the war that is largely unpopular among Americans, saying that the conflict will end “when I feel it in my bones.”
