British couple jailed in Iran: 'We're likely to be here for a long time'

Key developments are emerging from the global stage. British couple jailed in Iran: 'We're likely to be here for a long time' 11 minutes ago Share Save Add as preferred on Google Watch: Craig and Lindsay Foreman speak to the 's Caroline Hawley via their son, Joe Lindsay Foreman says she is keeping sane by reading, doing laps of the prison yard and, when she can, practising yoga. Exercise, she says, has always been her "salvation". But after 16 months in jail in Iran, she admits she is struggling.

"I'm dealing with the realisation that we're likely to be here for a long time," she tells me over the phone from Iran's notorious Evin jail. Lindsay, a 53-year-old life coach, and her husband Craig, 52, were on a round-the-world motorcycle trip when they were arrested on suspicion of espionage in January 2025 - charges they adamantly deny. 'We're wasting our lives in here' After living through the recent war in Iran, the pair, from East Sussex, are now facing the painful reality of a 10-year prison sentence handed down against them in February.

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"I just feel that we're wasting our lives in here and rotting away," Craig says. "We are innocent people. We have committed no offence.

" He makes a plea to the government: "Just take action. It seems to me we're sitting here like sitting ducks. " The pair are speaking to the media together, via separate phones, for the first time since their incarceration.

They are being kept in different cells within the same prison. After months of being unable to communicate with others, their son, Joe Bennett, now gets regular phone calls from his mother and step-father. They are patched through to them from payphones in Evin prison via the Foreign Office, which has described their incarceration as "appalling" and "unjustifiable".

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Getty Images Joe Bennett now gets regular phone calls from his mother Lindsay and step-father Craig Conversations are not easy. The lines drop out regularly and calls are monitored. Every couple of minutes a recording in Farsi interrupts, saying: "This call is from Evin prison and the caller is a prisoner.

" "It's very frustrating, but these phone calls are a lifeline for them and for us," says Joe, who allowed us to speak to his parents when they called in. The couple say prison life has returned to its normal monotony after the intense fear they experienced during the Israel-US war with Iran. A fragile ceasefire is holding for now.

Lindsay is currently reading The Road Less Travelled, by Scott Peck - a book about personal growth in difficult times. She worries she will soon run out of books to borrow from the prison library. Consular visits are no longer taking place - the British embassy closed temporarily when the war began and is yet to reopen.

The development has drawn wide international attention, with diplomatic circles watching closely.