Two British-Australian women detained in Iran

Two British-Australian women have been arrested and detained in Iran.

One of the women is a blogger who had been travelling through Asia with her Australian boyfriend and the second woman is a university lecturer who had been working at an Australian university.

Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs confirmed it was helping three people detained in Iran.

The brief statement from Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade came after the British newspaper the Times reported that two British-Australian women and the Australian boyfriend of one of them had been jailed in Iran.

The Times said a blogger who had been travelling in Asia with her Australian boyfriend, as well as an academic who had studied at Cambridge University and was lecturing at a university in Australia had been detained in separate incidents.

They are being held in the same prison in Tehran where a British-Iranian aid worker, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, has been jailed since 2016 on spying charges, the Times said.

The newspaper did not name the dual British-Australians at the request of the British Foreign Office and said the Australian government was taking the lead in both cases.

Via Reuters