TWO women who are dual British-Australian citizens and an Australian man have been detained in Iran, one of them sentenced to 10 years in prison, Australia’s government and media said yesterday.

Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said it was providing consular assistance to the families of all three. The department said it could not comment further due to privacy obligations.

The department also urged Australians to follow its travel advice, which includes a warning that foreigners risk arbitrary detention in Iran.

A British-Australian blogger and her Australian boyfriend were detained 10 weeks ago while traveling through Asia, The Times newspaper in London reported.

A British-Australian academic who studied at Cambridge University and was lecturing at an Australian university was detained separately and sentenced to 10 years in prison, the newspaper reported.

The newspaper said she was being held in solitary confinement but it did not know what she had been convicted of doing.

The lecturer has been behind bars for almost a year, Australian Broadcasting Corp. reported.

The Australian Government, the newspaper and the ABC have not released names.

The three are being held in Tehran’s Evin prison, where British Iranian Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, 41, has been detained since 2016 on spying charges, the newspaper reported.

The women are thought to be the first British passport holders who do not also have Iranian nationality to have been imprisoned by Tehran in recent years, the newspaper said.

(SD-Agencies)