TEHRAN: Iran has charged detained British couple Craig and Lindsay Foreman with espionage, accusing them of collaborating with Western intelligence services, the judiciary said on Tuesday.

The British foreign ministry said it was “deeply concerned” by the Iranian announcement. “We continue to raise this case directly with the Iranian authorities,” it added.

Iran’s judiciary spokesman Asghar Jahangir said the couple were alleged to have entered Iran “posing as tourists” and gathered information before their arrest in the southeastern province of Kerman.

The judiciary’s Mizan Online website quoted Kerman chief justice Ebrahim Hamidi as saying the couple’s links to foreign intelligence services had been confirmed. “Additional investigations are still ongoing,” Hamidi added. Jahangir was quoted as saying the couple had been taken into custody by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on “espionage charges”.

The Foremans were accused of gathering “information from several provinces” and “cooperating with covert institutions linked to the intelligence services of hostile and Western countries”, the spokesman said. The BBC has reported that the couple are in their early 50s and were on a motorbike trip around the world when they were detained in January.

According to social media posts, they crossed into Iran from Armenia in December and were gradually making their way to Australia.

On Friday, Britain’s Foreign Office said it was “providing consular assistance to two British nationals detained in Iran” and was in contact with Iranian authorities.

Last week, Iran’s official IRNA news agency said British ambassador Hugo Shorter met with the couple at the Kerman prosecutor’s office. The agency also published a photo of the meeting, with the couple’s faces blurred. The British government advises against all travel to Iran.

Several other Europeans have been arrested in recent years by Iran, which has conducted multiple prisoner exchanges with Western governments in recent years.

In January 2023, Iran announced the execution of British-Iranian dual citizen Alireza Akbari, prompting outrage among Western governments including Britain, which called it “barbaric”. Akbari had been convicted of spying for Britain.

In January, Iran released Italian journalist Cecilia Sala, who was arrested the month before for “violating the law of the Islamic republic”.

Her release came days before Italy freed Iranian national Mohammad Abedini, who was arrested in Milan in December at the behest of the United States.

The US had accused him of violating US sanctions and supplying sophisticated drone navigation technology to Iran’s military. Iran denied any link between Sala and Abedini’s cases. French couple Cecile Kohler and Jacques Paris have been jailed since May 2022 on charges of espionage.

In June, Iran released two Swedes, one of them a European Union diplomat, in exchange for a former official held in Sweden, in a swap mediated by Oman.

Published in Dawn, February 19th, 2025