Craig and Linsday Foreman had entered Iran despite Foreign Office advice – which warns against travelling to the country due to the risk of being arrested – but with valid visas, a tour guide and a pre-approved itinerary.<\/p>\n
The couple had been on a “once in a lifetime” motorbike journey from Europe to Australia and had only intended to be in Iran for a few days. <\/p>\n
Linsday Foreman, a life coach, had been asking people along the route what it means to live a good life.<\/p>\n
They were both given 10-year sentences last month, after a “sham trial”, according to their family.<\/p>\n
Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper described the sentences at the time as “completely appalling and totally unjustified”.<\/p>\n
She met Mr Bennett to discuss the case last week, but he expressed frustration afterwards, saying the government lacked a clear strategy or sense of urgency.<\/p>\n
“While France and Germany have secured the release of their citizens through assertive intervention, the UK remains trapped in a wait-and-see approach that has already cost my parents nearly 15 months of their lives,” he said.<\/p>\n
The Foreign Office’s website advice on not travelling to Iran states: “Having a British passport or connections to the UK can be reason enough for the Iranian authorities to detain you.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Craig and Linsday Foreman had entered Iran despite Foreign Office advice – which warns against travelling to the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":490605,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-490604","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-kingdom","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-greatbritain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=490604"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490604\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/490605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=490604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=490604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=490604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}