The sound is a bit cumbersome, but Anoshe Assuri's voice does not diminish as he delivers his message to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson from inside Iran's Evin prison.
"We need your help," the retired engineer said in a phone recording to a British and Iranian passport to his wife in London.
Three years after his arrest in Tehran, he ended the solitary question and signaling that led to the end of his life, but the 66-year-old's greatest fear is now the coronavirus.
In a recording shared with AFP, Johnson was quoted as saying, "I want to take action and get me and my fellow British citizens out of the Avin prison, where the threat of COVID-19 is as strong as ever." "
"My fear is that we have forgotten the British government."
Her family says Ashuri was visiting her mother in Tehran in August 2017, when she was arrested and charged with committing gossiping in Israel and was jailed for ten years.
Dual citizens from different countries have been detained in Iran, and campaigners and the British government say that it is a hostage policy aimed at putting pressure on Western countries.
In an interview in the garden of Asuri's south-east London home, his wife, Sheri Izadi, described the allegations against him as "untrue" and said his trial lasted just an hour.
The father, who said the two were not into politics, told AFP: "We have a lot in common - we're very unpredictable."
Still, "he went out one day to do some shopping and he didn't come back".
- 'There is nothing going' -
She initially said she spent time in solitary confinement, prolonged interrogation and threatening to break up her husband, who went on a 17-day hunger strike and tried to kill herself.
Since he believes, he is good, healthy and engaging in impromptu lessons with fellow inmates, but the family fears for the future.
She says, "A mug cannot live anywhere for 10 years. He never did."
The outbreak of the coronavirus initially provided temporary release for some foreign prisoners, including the British-Iranian Nazneen Zagari-Ratcliffe, whose husband was constantly campaigning for her freedom.
But Asuri is in prison and families are becoming impatient with the lack of progress the British government has made.
Izadi met with Secretary of State Dominic Rabb in October, but said: "nothing came of it."
The Foreign Office advised him not to speak to the media when he tried the diplomatic route, but Asuri urged him to release his statement, which is part of a diary recorded by his wife on a daily call. Being.
“He said he had nothing to lose,” his daughter Alika, 33, told AFP.
- Diplomatic pawns -
The Foreign Office has recorded dozens of incidents with British passports arrested in Iran since 2015, suggesting the dual British-Iranian nationals not leave in May last year.
In December 2018, former Secretary of State Jeremy Hunt accused Tehran of using foreign passport holders as "pawns of diplomatic levitation" - something Iran strongly condemned.
Supporters of Ashuri and Zagari-Ratcliff believe their cases are tied to a protracted legal battle of $ 400 million ($ 500 million) paid to Iran UK in the 1970s.
Campaigners have also shouted over the closure of dual citizens of other countries, including French-Iranian academic Fariba Adelia.
In another message sent from the jail, Asuri said one of his fellow inmates had put Adalka in jail.
"She dragged her by the hair and dragged her to the ground, and was bathed with curses and other physical and verbal abuse," the undercover police guards said.
- Fair Legal Policy -
A Foreign Office spokesman said the duty of dual civilians in Iran was "a priority" and raised with Tehran the highest level of government.
"We strongly urge Iran to reunite with its family, the Assyrian British-Iranian dual nation," a spokesman said.
But the Iranian embassy in London rejected the politically motivated allegations.
A statement to the AFP said that "the judicial process of the Iranian judiciary" has convicted Assure of crimes related to national security, including the right and opportunity for Mr. Asuri.
"Iranian authorities ensure proper access to medical services for inmates inside or outside the prison on a regular basis."
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