Two British-Australian women have been arrested and detained in Iran, a Sky source has confirmed.
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 providing assistance to three people detained in Iran.
The blogger and her boyfriend were reportedly arrested about 10 weeks ago. They had been in the country as part of a long trip which they were documenting on social media.
The Times cited a source as saying that the blogger had been told by Iranian authorities that she was being held as part of a plan to facilitate a prisoner swap with Australia.
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The university lecturer has been in jail for almost a year and is in solitary confinement.
According to the report, she has been sentenced to 10 years in jail, although her alleged crime is not known.
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The two cases are understood to be unrelated.
The Times reported that the women are in Tehran's Evin jail, where British-Iranian mother Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has been held since 2016 on spying charges.
The two women are thought to be the first British passport holders who do not also have Iranian nationality to have been jailed in Iran recently.
The arrests come amid a souring in relations between Britain and Iran, after issues such as the seizure by the Royal Marines in July of an Iranian oil tanker near Gibraltar.
Two weeks later, the British-flagged oil tanker Stena Impero was seized by Iran for alleged marine violations in the Strait of Hormuz. Seven of the Swedish-owned vessel's 23-stRead More – Source
