Iran protests add complexity, says son of British couple

LONDON:

The son of a British couple held in Iran said Saturday that protests there add "another layer of complexity", as family and friends marked the one-year anniversary of their detentions.

Lindsay and Craig Foreman, both in their early fifties, were seized on January 3 last year, according to relatives, as they passed through central Iran during a round-the-world motorbike trip.

The following month Iranian state media announced their arrest on espionage charges, which the couple deny. Their family knew little about their whereabouts for months.

Both are now being held in the country's notorious Evin Prison, with the anniversary of their detention coming amid growing political and economic demonstrations across Iran.

"The protests have added... another layer of complexity, for sure, because you're now trying to think of something that's out of anyone's control," the couple's son Joe Bennett told AFP, adding: "So how do you prepare for that?"

He said the family "don't know if it's good thing or bad thing" for the couple.

"If there's a new regime, will they release the prisoners? Will they keep it? You just don't know."

Bennett was speaking as friends, family and former detainees gathered in central London and handed in a petition to Downing Street signed by more than 61,000 people urging the British government to do more to free them.

Ex-detainee in Iran Anoosheh Ashoori and Richard Ratcliffe, who fought a public campaign for the release of his wife Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe from incarceration there, were among those who turned out.

Bennett has met Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper, but wants the government to pressure Tehran more publicly on his parent's case.

The Foreign Office has insisted it is regularly raising it directly with Iranian authorities while staff are also providing consular assistance and staying in close contact with the family.

Bennett told AFP he had been in more regular contact with his parents after they staged in November a six-day hunger strike demanding better treatment.

That increased contact included an agonising Christmas Day phone call.

"You could just hear that they were putting on brave face but my mum broke down at the end of the call, because they were all about getting together, they were about celebration," he said.