THE family of a British-Iranian man imprisoned in a Tehran jail riddled with Covid-19 held a protest today outside Downing Street to demand that the British government secure his release.

Iran temporarily released 85,000 inmates on Tuesday in an attempt to avoid mass outbreaks of the virus behind bars, but political prisoner Anoosheh Ashoori was not one of them.

The engineer, who lived with his family in London, was handed a 10-year sentence in 2019 after he was accused by Iran of spying for Israel, a charge he denies.

Last week the 66-year-old was moved to a different ward in Evin prison, just outside Iran’s capital, where he said coronavirus patients had previously been incarcerated. Despite this, he told his family there were no signs that the ward had been disinfected.

The protest comes after Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, another Iranian-British national held in the same prison, was freed on Tuesday for two weeks.

Mr Ashoori’s family and friends rallied outside No10 and the Foreign Office to demand that Mr Ashoori be given the same reprieve.

“We want definitive action now, no bureaucratic talk, we need a real solution now,” Mr Ashoori’s son Aryan told the Morning Star.

“My dad’s 66, we can’t risk him staying there with the threat of coronavirus.”

Ahead of the protest, Aryan said his father had called to inform the family that 20 more political prisoners had been released.

“We’re worried that they [the British and Iranian authorities] have made a deal behind the scenes, possibly releasing aid to Iran in exchange for freeing some [dual-nationality citizens], but they haven’t included us,” he explained.

Mr Ashoori’s family believes that Iran is using him as a means of pressing the British government to pay off a historic £380 million debt that it still owes after reneging on a deal to supply tanks to the former shah in 1979.

The family has accused the government of showing indifference to the plight of Mr Anoosheh, especially in view of the worsening Covid-19 situation in Evin.

“The government should use this unprecedented opportunity of a common threat of this disease to improve relations with Iran, potentially paying their £400m debt as aid,” Aryan said.

Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s husband Richard attended today’s demonstration in solidarity. His wife, who was arrested in Tehran in 2016, has been released with an ankle tag until April 4, restricted to within 300 metres of her parents’ home.