Foreign Office appoints first special envoy for Britons detained overseas

Alistair Burt will bring diplomatic clout to complex cases involving human rights violations and arbitrary detentionThe Foreign Office has appointed a special envoy for British citizens detained overseas, a new role to deal with “complex consular cases” such as that of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the British-Iranian dual national who was imprisoned in Tehran for six years.Alistair Burt, the former Conservative Middle East minister, has taken on the role, fulfilling a pledge by David Lammy when he was shadow foreign secretary.