Iran’s judiciary says it has sentenced a British-Iranian woman and an Iranian man to 10 years in prison after convicting them of spying for Israel.<\/p>\n
The woman, who was named as Anousheh Ashouri, was also handed a two-year term for illicitly acquiring money.<\/p>\n
She and Ali Johari, an Iranian citizen, were accused of passing information to Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency.<\/p>\n
The UK Foreign Office said it had been supporting the family of a British-Iranian dual national held in Iran.<\/p>\n
“Our embassy in Tehran continues to request consular access,” it added.<\/p>\n
“The treatment of all dual nationals detained in Iran is a priority and we raise their cases at the most senior levels. We urge Iran to let them be reunited with their families.”<\/p>\n
Iran has detained a number of dual citizens and foreign nationals in recent years, many of them on spying charges. They include Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian a project manager for the Thomson Reuters Foundation who was sentenced to five years in prison in 2016.<\/p>\n
The Iranian authorities do not recognise dual nationality for Iranian citizens and do not grant consular access for foreign diplomats to visit them in detention.<\/p>\n
Iran’s judiciary also confirmed on Tuesday that an Iranian employed by the British Council had lost her appeal against a 10-year sentence for spying.<\/p>\n
Aras Amiri, who had been working for the UK cultural organisation in London, was detained in Iran in March 2018.<\/p>\n
Last week, her fiance told the BBC that she was being used as a “bargaining chip” by Iran’s government. James Tyson said the UK needed to “get on the phone” to Iran and “say this can’t happen”.<\/p>\n
He added that Aras Amiri was being held in the same prison as Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, and that the two women were “close” and “very supportive of each other”.<\/p>\n
Relations between the UK and Iran have been strained in recent weeks by a row over the seizure of two oil tankers.<\/p>\n
On 4 July, an Iranian tanker was seized off the coast of Gibraltar with the help of the Royal Marines on suspicion of breaching EU sanctions on Syria.<\/p>\n
The vessel was released on 15 August, but Iran is still holding a British-flagged tanker it seized in the Gulf on 19 July for breaking “international maritime rules”.<\/p>\n
Source: bbc.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"