▶ Watch Video: Son of British couple imprisoned in Iran implores Trump to help secure their freedom
London — A British man jailed in Iran on espionage charges that officials call baseless has had his decade-long prison sentence extended by a further two years, his family said Wednesday, as he and his partner grow weak from an ongoing two-month hunger strike.
Craig Foreman, 52, was arrested in Iran with his wife Lindsay, 53, in January 2025 on a motorcycle trip from Europe to Asia. In February, 10 days before the U.S. and Israel launched joint attacks on Iran, sparking the ongoing war, they were charged with espionage and sentenced to 10 years in prison by a judge who is under U.S., U.K. and European Union sanctions for holding “show trials.”
They have been imprisoned for more than 18 months, most of which they are known to have spent in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison.
Joe Bennett, Lindsay’s son and the family’s spokesperson, said in a statement Wednesday that they had received “extremely concerning reports” that his stepfather Craig’s sentence had been increased for speaking to the media.
HRANA/Handout
“We understand he was told he was being taken to see his lawyer but was instead brought before a judge and informed of the additional sentence,” said Bennett. “Despite requests, he was allowed no lawyer, no translator and no opportunity to defend himself.”
“We didn’t think we could be any more shocked at their appalling treatment,” said Bennett, “but in this case we are absolutely flabbergasted.”
A spokesperson for the British Foreign Office told CBS News on Wednesday that the government was “urgently following up with the Iranian authorities about the reported increased sentence.”
“A son who’s desperately worried”
Craig Foreman began his hunger strike on May 9 and Lindsay joined him on May 18, according to the family. It is their second such protest, having carried out a previous hunger strike in November 2025.
“Both have lost a significant amount of weight and their health continues to deteriorate,” according to the statement, which adds that a letter written by loved ones asking the couple to drop their protest and start eating again has been prevented from reaching them in prison.
“Some days you wake up feeling hopeful,” Bennett told CBS News on Wednesday. “Other days you receive news like Craig’s received a two-year sentence, and it feels like the floor disappears beneath you again.”
“My life has become a cycle of speaking to the government, to lawyers, journalists, MPs, and at the same time, I’m a son who’s desperately worried about his mum and Craig,” he said.
“The hardest part of it all is the uncertainty,” added Bennett. “Every phone call makes you wonder if it’s going to be good news or bad news, and you never really know how to switch off.”
The Foremans had been allowed to call their family after initially being denied calls for the first seven months of their sentences, but since May they have again been cut off, according to the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), which says they are also being denied adequate medical care. The organization says Craig has lost 35 pounds and Lindsay, who is also suffering dizzy spells and body tremors, has lost 30.
The couple has vehemently denied Iranian authorities’ spying allegations. In April, British lawmaker Hamish Falconer, who is also an under-secretary in the Foreign Office, said the Foremans were “innocent tourists.”
Bennett says the family has been buffeted by the relentless twists and turns of the Iran war, knowing Craig and Lindsay could be inadvertently hit by U.S. or Israeli strikes on the country.
“When military action escalates, you know, we don’t know how my mum and Craig are,” he told CBS News.
In June 2025, after the Foremans were due to be moved to Evin prison, Israeli forces bombed the facility. Bennett and his family only found out a month later they had not yet been transferred.
Having been held at separate prisons, they were eventually both moved to Evin in October 2025.
“Every headline that you see brings another wave of us asking ourselves, ‘Are they safe?'”
“Asking for mercy”
In June, two United Nations experts called on Iran to free the Foremans.
“Lindsay and Craig Foreman should not be in prison,” U.N. special rapporteurs Mai Sato and Dr. Alice Jill Edwards said, having written to Iranian authorities in April. “They appear to have been wrongfully detained, prosecuted on highly questionable grounds, and sentenced after proceedings that failed to meet basic fair trial guarantees.”
The British government, which has advised against all travel to Iran since May 2022, previously called the decade-long sentence “completely appalling and totally unjustifiable.”
The family welcomed an announcement this week that the U.K. government had appointed its first envoy to support British nationals detained in complex cases overseas. They’re pushing for the U.K. to formally recognize the couple’s case as arbitrary detention.
Asked what he thought it would take to bring them home, Bennett replied said it would require “courage” and “political will.”
If the British government “makes these cases a genuine priority, people do come home. You see that with Nazanin [Zaghari-Ratcliffe], Anoosheh [Ashoori] and others,” he said, referring to Britons held in Iran who were released in 2022.
“Every case is different, but history shows that persistence, international cooperation and determined engagement, they all matter,” he said. “We are asking, with everything we have, for them to be shown mercy and allowed to come home.”
