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A British couple who had participated in a motorcycle tour in the world was detained in Iran, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Great Britain announced on Saturday.
The couple, Craig and Lindsay Foreman, were heard last time on social networks in early January. But this week, the Iranian state media reported that two British nationals had been detained with suspicion of “security crimes”.
The British Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed its detention after Iranian reports and published a declaration on behalf of the couple’s family on behalf of the family.
“This unexpected turn of events aroused a significant concern for our whole family, and we are deeply focusing on the guarantee of their security and well-being during this difficult period,” the family said.
Mr. and Mrs Foreman, both in the mid -1950s, were on a motorcycle tour in Australia, where Ms. Foreman, was to deliver a newspaper at a conference on psychology. They live in Spain, where Ms. Foreman worked as a psychologist and life coach and Mr. Foreman as a carpenter.
The couple’s detention was revealed for the first time when the Iranian state media published a photograph From the British ambassador to Iran, Hugo Shorter, meeting two British citizens accused of “security crimes”.
The Iranian state media scrambled the couple’s faces in the image, taken from the Kerman prosecutor’s office, a city to be over 600 miles east of the capital, Tehran.
In her declaration, the family said that she “actively joined the British government and the relevant authorities, working with diligence to sail in the complexities of this issue”.
It is not known how long the couple was held in Iran. Before their detention, the foreman shared their trips on social networks. They posted for the last time on January 3, saying they were in Iran.
“To put your minds at rest, we spend the most incredible time in Iran,” said the couple in an article on Facebook, adding that they were traveling with a tourist guide. On Instagram, Ms. Foreman published a photo of herself by meeting a theologian in a Madrasa in Isfahan, where she wrote that “the journey continues to teach me that the nucleus of humanity is shared.”
The couple had crossed Iran of Armenia and planned to go to Pakistan then, they said.
“The British government advises against all trips, except essential, in these regions, and the news depicts a rather dark image”, they Published on Facebook December 30. “We want to discover it for ourselves. This is why we are here.
The message included two images side by side: one of the orange and yellow cards of the orange and yellow Foreign, advising British citizens not to go to Iran, and another of a photo of the green lawns of a mosque, An image whose location was pinned in Norduz, near the Iranian border with Armenia.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs advises all trips to Iran, warn This “double British and British-Iranian national national run a significant risk of arrest, questioning or detention”.
Iran has repeatedly imprisoned foreigners and two nationals in the last decade, including an Iranian-American citizen and an Italian journalist owned last year and a Swedish EU official arrested in 2023.
Several double British citizens have been among those arrested, including Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who was detained for six years; Aras Amiri, a 32 -year -old art student; And Abbas Edalat, a university and anti-war activist. Ms. Amiri, arrested during her visit to her grandmother’s visit and accused of espionage, was released after three years in prison, and Mr. Edalat was released after several months.
Human rights groups have said that many of these detentions were part of a deliberate policy to extract concessions from other countries, including prisoners’ exchanges.
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