A British couple detained in Iran have been sentenced to 10 years in prison on espionage charges, their family said on Thursday, prompting renewed calls on London to secure their release.
Lindsay and Craig Foreman, both in their 50s, were arrested in January 2025 while on a motorcycle trip through Iran. They deny the charges.
The couple were tried in October at Branch 15 of Tehran’s Revolutionary Court and were not allowed to present a defense, according to their son, Joe Bennett. A judge delivered the verdict in recent days, the family told BBC.
“We are deeply concerned about their welfare,” Bennett said, urging the British government to “act decisively and use every available avenue” to bring them home.
He said Iranian authorities had presented no evidence of espionage and that their lawyers had been told there was no legal basis for the case. Applications for bail were ignored, he added.
Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper has decried their sentence as "completely appalling and totally unjustifiable".
"We will pursue this case relentlessly with the Iranian government until we see Craig and Lindsay Foreman safely returned to the UK and reunited with their family," she said.
Britain’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office has previously said it was “deeply concerned” by the couple’s detention and that it continued to raise the case directly with Iranian authorities.
The Foremans are being held in separate wings of Tehran’s Evin prison, which rights groups have long criticized over alleged torture and inhumane conditions.
Bennett has said the couple endured 13 months in dire conditions, surrounded by “dirt, vermin, and violence,” and that they had been losing weight.
In November, Bennett said his mother had begun a hunger strike inside Evin, telling him during a brief phone call that “not eating was the only power she’s got.”
The couple were first detained in the southeastern city of Kerman, where they spent 30 days in solitary confinement before being transferred to Tehran, the family has said. They had entered Iran with valid visas, a licensed guide and a cleared itinerary, Bennett added.
Rights groups and Western governments have long accused Iran of engaging in so-called “hostage diplomacy” by detaining foreign nationals to gain political or economic concessions, an allegation Tehran rejects, saying it faces Western intelligence infiltration.
Kazem, a 40-year-old Tehran resident, says he was present as part of the state’s repression apparatus during two nights of mass violence, January 8 and 9.
He says he had previously spent a relatively long time in detention by the IRGC Intelligence Organization and was released after promising cooperation. He maintains that he did not kill anyone and that he fired only into the air.
His account, given in an extended interview, offers a detailed insider description of how forces were assembled, armed and deployed.
Certain personal and operational details are not being published for security reasons.
The call-up
Kazem says that on the afternoon of January 7, while returning home from work, he received a call from a security contact instructing him to report to the IRGC’s Vali-e Asr garrison at 10 a.m. the next morning.
The compound houses intelligence operations for Tehran province and coordinates deployments of security and plainclothes forces across the capital.
“I assumed it was related to Pahlavi’s call for January 8 and 9,” he said.
He says dozens of men were present when he arrived, some of whom he had seen during previous security mobilizations.
“There were two types of people,” he said. “Some looked like office employees or shopkeepers – probably like me, under their knife – and others looked like thugs and hooligans. Those were especially violent.”
Roughly 50 to 60 men were taken into a hall, he says, where an intelligence official outlined the “possibility of unrest” and said they would assist in “controlling riots.”
Those without firearms experience received brief weapons instruction. Pre-prepared authorizations were distributed for Kalashnikov rifles, handguns and ammunition.
“The document I received was a temporary mission order,” he said, “on the letterhead of the Mohammad Rasoulallah Corps” – the IRGC’s main Tehran command, responsible for coordinating IRGC Ground Forces and Basij operations in the capital – signed by a senior operations official at the Imam Ali headquarters, a Basij-affiliated security structure created to respond to street protests and internal unrest.
“I received a weapon from the armory and was told to report at 5 p.m. to the Qods Basij Resistance Base in Jannat Abad, northwestern Tehran”
From there, he says, groups were assigned geographic zones. Some moved two by two on motorcycles; others in Toyota Hilux or Peugeot vehicles. He says he was deployed to western Tehran before 8 p.m.
Hunting leaders and death ambushes
Kazem describes Sadeghieh, a bustling northwestern neighborhood of the capital, as one of the primary confrontation zones.
He says he observed what he calls two distinct operational patterns.
The first he describes as “hunting leaders.”
According to Kazem, experienced intelligence operatives infiltrated protest crowds while appearing to join demonstrators. Their task, he says, was to identify individuals perceived as organizers or focal points – often those who appeared physically fit or athletic.
“After identifying targets, at an opportune moment – such as in dark streets where lights had been cut – they would shoot them from behind at close range with handguns,” he said. “Or they would communicate with snipers stationed on nearby rooftops, giving descriptions of clothing so the target could be shot.”
He says rooftop snipers were positioned on multiple buildings in the area.
The second pattern, he says, involved steering crowds into enclosed spaces.
“They would drive and direct frightened people into dead-end alleys or places already under control,” he said. “This pattern was repeated many times Friday night in the part of Tehran where I was. The goal was to kill as many as possible. No one was meant to be arrested there. Many fell into ambushes and were killed.”
Multiple videos sent to Iran International, along with documented reports published by outlets including Reuters and verified by Amnesty International, indicate that snipers were positioned on rooftops – including on top of a police station – and fired at protesters’ heads and upper bodies.
One eyewitness told Iran International that on Sunday morning, January 11, even after municipal water trucks had washed the streets, blood traces were still visible along Ashrafi Esfahani Street in Sadeghieh.
According to information shared with Iran International, during an emergency meeting with Tehran medical officials on the morning of January 9, a senior health official said that aggregated figures from the city’s treatment centers up to that point showed at least 1,800 people had been killed in the crackdown on the evening of January 8.
Finishing shots
Kazem describes encountering injured protesters in southern Tehran in the early hours.
In one instance, he says, he approached a man who had lost a significant amount of blood.
“He pleaded, ‘I have a small child, don’t shoot,’” Kazem recalled.
“I told him to pretend to be dead so they wouldn’t give him a coup de grâce,” he said.
Minutes later, he says, a motorcycle stopped beside the wounded man.
“The officer kicked him to confirm he was alive, then shot him in the head at close range.”
Killing children and refrigerated trucks
Kazem says children were among those killed. Based on what he says he personally observed in Sadeghieh and in one southern Tehran district, he estimates that at least 200 children died over the two nights.
He says bodies were collected using refrigerated trucks belonging to the Mihan ice cream company, similar to methods he says were used during earlier protests.
“Like in the 2022 protests, refrigerated Mihan ice cream trucks were used,” he said. “I personally helped load corpses.”
According to Kazem, the trucks were used to remove bodies from streets and transport them to undisclosed locations.
He describes a scene that remains vivid to him.
“We were loading bodies into a Mihan truck when I saw the man next to me tear the necklace and earrings off a 9- or 10-year-old dead girl before throwing her into the truck. I looked at him in fear.”
Kazem says he did not intervene and continued loading bodies.
Reports suggest the removal operation was systematic.
Iran Human Rights said in a report published on February 3 that, citing an eyewitness in Lorestan province, security forces transported the bodies of those killed in refrigerated Mihan ice cream trucks to the courtyard of a hospital in the province.
Iran International contacted Mihan to ask whether the company’s trucks were used to move bodies during the January 8-9 protests and whether the company confirmed the account. No response had been received by the time of publication.
France 24 and Amnesty International’s Switzerland office have also reported the use of food transport vehicles and containers to move the bodies of those killed.
Burning property and foreign forces
Kazem says he personally witnessed security personnel setting fire to banks and mosques after first clearing valuables.
“They would first evacuate valuables before burning the site,” he said. “I personally witnessed instructions to remove valuable items from a mosque before it was set on fire.”
He also says he saw a small number of fighters affiliated with Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces in Sadeghieh on the first night.
“The absolute majority were IRGC, plainclothes, Basij and security forces,” he said. “But I did see a small number of Hashd al-Shaabi.”
In the areas where he was present, he says regular police and special units appeared less directly engaged in lethal force.
“I think they weren’t prepared for killing on that scale,” he said.
Media reports have confirmed a limited presence of Hashd al-Shaabi forces in some areas during the crackdown. Videos from inside Iran also suggest that damage to public property was carried out by security forces footage – that several outlets, including Le Monde, have verified.
Payment for the dead
Kazem says he returned his weapon to the Vali-e Asr garrison on Saturday morning and was no longer required.
He says that afterward he heard from contacts that families seeking the bodies of loved ones were sometimes required to pay money, calculated according to neighborhood and reported property damage.
“They couldn’t charge everyone for bullets,” he said. “But when they did, it was based on how much damage the neighborhood had suffered.”
Iran International has documented in multiple reports that authorities extorted money from bereaved families in exchange for returning the bodies of their loved ones.
Kazem’s narrative adds another piece to the picture: January 8 and 9 were not reactive policing, but a coordinated, military-style campaign designed to crush protests with deadly force.
Human rights investigators say evidence indicates Sam Afshari was alive when security forces detained him in the city of Karaj, but was later killed by a gunshot wound to the head consistent with an execution carried out after his arrest.
“The bullet entered through the back of his head and exited through his face," Shahin Milani, IHRDC Executive Director told Iran International.
"The injury he sustained during the protests was not the shot that killed him,” Milani said.
Before leaving to join the protests, Sam sent a final message to his father on Jan 7.
“Dad, don’t tell mom anything. I’m going to fight for my rights. Iran is in danger. Please don’t tell my mother.”
His father, Parviz Afshari, who lives in Germany, would spend days searching for answers after his son disappeared.
According to Milani, testimony gathered from the family indicates that Sam’s initial injury during the protests was not fatal.
Residents living nearby Taleghani Square in Karaj saw that Sam had been wounded and attempted to bring him inside to help. Before they could do so, security forces arrived and dragged him away while he was still alive, according to his father’s account.
"The inhuman repressive forces dragged my son," Parviz told IRHDC in a video recording.
After that, he vanished.
“When his family eventually recovered his body, it was clear he had been shot again,” Milani said.
Where the fatal shooting occurred remains unclear. Sam’s father received conflicting accounts — one suggesting it may have happened at a medical facility and another claiming detainees were shot while being transported. Investigators say those details cannot yet be independently confirmed, but the available evidence indicates he was killed after arrest.
Sam's father described him as an exceptionally talented teenager — a computer science prodigy, a competitive swimming champion and fluent in multiple languages.
Milani said interviewing the father was deeply personal, underscoring how the profile of victims in Iran has changed over time.
“The father is nearly my age,” Milani said. “It forces you to realize that the young people being killed today are children who could have been our own.”
Sam Afshari’s case is part of a broader pattern emerging from Iran’s January crackdown, during which students and minors were among those killed. An Iranian teachers’ union has published the names of roughly 200 students killed during the protests, describing the list as both a record of loss and a demand for accountability.
At least 24 children, including a three-year-old, were killed by direct fire from security forces during Iran’s nationwide protests, according to the HANA Human Rights Organization. The group said it confirmed the identities of the children through on-the-ground research and cross-checking multiple sources.
HANA said the shooting of children was not an isolated incident but part of a systematic pattern, with gunfire in many documented cases directed at vital parts of the body.
For Sam's father - the loss is already painfully clear — a teenager who left home believing he was fighting for his future and never returned.
Sam had been preparing to join him in Germany later this year — a plan that ended before it could begin.
The trials were presided over by Judge Abolghasem Salavati, head of Branch 15 of Tehran’s Revolutionary Court, who is widely known for handing down severe sentences in protest-related and political cases, the sources said.
Salavati has been holding simultaneous virtual hearings in which detainees are tried in groups of 14, according to the sources.
Among those sentenced is Abolfazl Karimi, a detained protester who the sources said had told his family in a phone call that he had been subjected to forced confessions under beatings and torture.
Karimi is the father of a young child and previously worked as a motorcycle courier in eastern Tehran.
He was arrested on January 6 while returning from work in Tehran’s Hengam neighborhood, where he encountered two injured women whose legs had been hit by gunfire from security forces, the sources said.
When he went to assist them, officers shot his leg with pellet rounds and arrested him along with the two wounded women, the sources added.
After about a month in detention in Greater Tehran Prison, he was recently transferred along with around 50 other protesters to Ghezel Hesar Prison, the sources said.
In a later phone call, Karimi told his family he had been tortured without medical treatment for his wounds and, while blindfolded, was forced to sign papers containing confessions against himself, according to the sources.
In recent days, Iran’s judiciary has intensified the process of trying protesters detained during the nationwide protests and issuing death sentences, the sources said.
On Monday Tehran Revolutionary Court, also presided over by Salavati, sentenced 19-year-old Mohammadamin Biglari to death on the charge of “enmity against God,” and the case has been referred to the Supreme Court, the sources said.
Biglari was arrested on January 8 on Tehran’s Damavand Street.
His mother is deceased, and his father was unaware of his fate for weeks, searching for him among bodies in Kahrizak before authorities informed him after three weeks that his son had been detained, the sources said.
Separately, on Sunday, the judiciary announced the first hearing session for three detained protesters—Ehsan Hosseinipour Hesarloo, Matin Mohammadi and Erfan Amiri—on charges including allegedly setting fire to Seyed al-Shohada Mosque in Pakdasht and alleged participation in murder.
Other charges against the three were announced as “assembly and collusion to appear and act against the country’s internal security following calls on hostile social media, particularly the US president and the Zionist regime (Israel)…” according to the judiciary-affiliated Mizan News Agency.
Norway-based rights group Hengaw said the case against the three was marred by due process violations.
"The hearing was held despite reports that the detainees have been denied basic rights since their arrest, including access to a lawyer of their choice and contact with their families. They were subjected to intense pressure and torture during detention and compelled to provide forced confessions," Hengaw said.
Tens of thousands of people have been arrested during the nationwide protests, many facing heavy charges, the sources said.
Some families have reported being pressured by security bodies to refrain from speaking to media or publicly discussing the cases of detained relatives, the sources added.
