UK – Daily Mail, Mar. 09, 2026
Phone calls between parents and children are a normal daily ritual in many homes.
Yet the three-beep dial is something entirely different to Joe Bennett.
It is the lifeline between him and his mother Lindsay Foreman, who was sentenced alongside her partner Craig last month to 10 years in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison.
The British couple, both 53 from East Sussex, are serving time in ‘rat-infested’ and overcrowded conditions for something they are adamant they never did: spying for their country and for Israel.
The couple now face new threats as US-Israeli missile strikes rain down on Iran, causing widespread destruction.
Since the decade-long sentence was handed down, Joe has noticed the couple’s plummeting mental health during their daily phone calls, which range from two minutes to 20.
Yet sometimes they are allowed no minutes at all as part of a morale-bashing game Joe believes the prison is playing.
‘Every day that passes is another day that chips away at all that resilience they have built up,’ Joe, from Folkestone, Kent, tells the Daily Mail.
‘Some days they can’t speak and there’s just an inability to function. When your mum is telling you that she’s only getting out of bed to have phone calls, you are worried sick.’
The situation has become so dire that Joe is planning to appeal to Donald Trump to save his family, having felt ‘abandoned’ by the UK, who he claims has provided very little support.
