‘I’m in intense pain’: Vahid Beheshti passes 70 days on hunger strike

Camped outside Foreign Office, Beheshti is demanding Iran's Revolutionary Guards be proscribed

Vahid Beheshti's hunger strike outside the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office took a surreal turn on Wednesday - its 70th day - when he attended a royal coronation tea party at Buckingham Palace, arriving by wheelchair and wearing a suit and red tie.

He has lost more than 17kg (37lb), or a quarter of his body weight, and he told the Guardian that my body and joints are now racked in intense pain". As he left his tent, draped in the Iranian flag and surrounded by flowers, he clutched an envelope containing a letter for the king. After carefully smartening himself up, he was wheeled to a taxi by his wife, Mattie Heaven, a Conservative councillor.