Joe Bennett was waiting for a call from his mother, Lindsay, who is detained in Iran’s notorious Evin Prison, on New Year’s Day.
She and her husband, Craig Foreman, were arrested almost a year ago on espionage charges while travelling through Iran on a motorcycling trip around the world.
Mr Bennett said he had not expected the couple would still be behind bars and their family in the UK would have to spend Christmas and New Year’s Eve without them.
“It’s a very strange time of the year, it has been tough,” he told The National. “There’s a hole – a void that has been hard to fill.”
He received a call from his mother on Christmas Day. In recent months she has been granted near-daily phone calls after more than half a year with no contact.
Instead of celebrating the New Year on Thursday, Mr Bennett wrote a letter to British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper about the “continued lack of action, transparency and care for families of British nationals arbitrarily detained abroad”.
“The whole philosophy of sitting and waiting and allowing it to play out … they’re kicking the can down the road,” he said. “How long do you sit and wait until you decide not to? What needs to change for you to change your strategy?”
Ms Cooper raised the issue of Lindsay and Craig's detention when she spoke with her Iranian counterpart Abbas Araghchi in December.
Meanwhile, widespread protests caused by the sharp devaluation of the national currency are taking hold across Iran. It is one of many waves of unrest to have rocked the autocratic regime in recent years. This adds layers of uncertainty for the couple’s relatives.
The family were initially told to wait until Lindsay and Craig’s trial, which took place in September. Though a verdict has been reached, according to their state-appointed defence lawyer in Iran, it has not been communicated to the prisoners or to British diplomats handling the case, Mr Bennett said.
The couple and their families both deny the charges of espionage and attempting to undermine the Islamic Republic, which were brought against them.
Mr Bennett says he would like to see more public pressure on the Iranian government from senior UK ministers. “Let’s formally recognise it as what it is, which is arbitrary detention. They need to be putting senior-level diplomatic pressure on the case,” he said.
“It is going to be the Hamish Falconers, the Yvette Coopers and the Keir Starmers of this world that will get them home, because they are who holds weight when dealing with other countries,” he said. Mr Falconer is Minister for the Middle East and North Africa.
Mr Bennett said he “cannot understand how the UK government can continue … a policy of silence, delay and drift, while two British citizens are held without sentence in dangerous and degrading conditions”.
Lindsay and Craig Foreman were granted a UK consular visit by the Iranian authorities on December 29, but the family will have to wait until the holiday period is over to speak to the team who met the couple.
Mr Bennett said this has left the family feeling “sidelined”. “We haven’t been allowed to speak to the team who saw Mum and Craig, because it’s their holidays. This is not good enough. It feels like the families are an afterthought.”
Craig is also being held in Evin prison, where he sleeps in an overcrowded dormitory with about 160 men, which is infested with rats and cockroaches, and with “no soap or disinfectant”.
He has told the family that there is barely room to stand, and that prisoners sleep on metal bunks.
He has received little medical care, despite the rapid spread of diseases in the prison. His clothes remain unwashed for weeks.
Lindsay is said to be losing hope, and her health has deteriorated after their two hearings in September last year. The family have sent her vitamins and skin treatments through approved prison channels, but these went missing before they could reach her.
Saturday will mark a year since the couple were first detained in the western city of Kerman.
The couple had entered Kerman during heightened police tension. Annual commemorations for the assassinated Iranian general Qassem Suleimani were being held and these had been targeted the previous year by ISIS bombers.
A film that the Foremans were making during their trip, which involved interviewing ordinary people about their definition of happiness, was used as evidence against the couple at their trial.
The family have planned choral procession outside Downing Street on Saturday to mark the anniversary of the couple’s detention. A choir of more than 100 people, made up of family members, former hostages and supporters, will sing and record Stand By Me.
Mr Bennett is hoping to play the recording to Lindsay when he speaks to her on the phone. “It’s a boost for them to know they’re not forgotten, even though it feels like their government keeps letting them down,” he said.
An FCDO spokesperson said the consular staff remained in close contact with the family:
"We are deeply concerned by reports that Craig and Lindsay Foreman have been charged with espionage in Iran. We continue to raise this case directly with the Iranian authorities," they said.
