Paris asks them “immediate release”. Five French people are currently “retained” in Iran, announced Tuesday, October 11 the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Catherine Colonna, on France Inter. The minister thus confirmed the presence of a Frenchman among the foreigners arrested by the Iranian authorities on the sidelines of the demonstrations which have shaken the country since the death of the young Mahsa Amini on September 16. The other four people have been held in the country for several months. Franceinfo returns to these detentions which create discord between Paris and Tehran.
1Who are these French nationals?
These five French citizens have very different profiles. Franco-Iranian researcher Fariba Adelkhah, 63, detained since June 2019. This member of the Center for International Relations Studies (CERI) at Sciences Po Paris, specialist in Shiism and post-revolution Iranhad been arrested alongside another French researcher, Roland Marchal, released ten months later.
Benjamin Brière, 37, is also on this list. The latter was arrested in May 2020 while on a tourist trip. Officially, this travel enthusiast has been arrested for having taken “photographs of prohibited areas” with a hobby drone in a natural park. More recently, two members of the French union Force Ouvrière, Cécile Kohler and Jacques Paris, aged 37 and 69, who were arrested in May 2021 during a tourist trip.
Finally, the identity of the fifth French national detained in Iran has not been communicated by the Quai d’Orsay, which nevertheless claims to have “made contact” with that person’s family.
2Have they been tried or sentenced?
Almost all the French detained in Iran have been the subject of a trial with convictions. Officially, researcher Fariba Adelkhah is serving a five-year prison sentence for “collusion with a view to undermining national security”. Blogger Benjamin Brière was sentenced to eight years in prison for “espionage” and an additional eight months in prison for “propaganda”.
In the case of trade unionists Cécile Kohler and Jacques Paris, arrested for “security breaches”, the trial is long overdue. But Iranian state television recently broadcast excerpts from controversial interviews in which the two Frenchmen seem to confess acts of espionage and violent plans. “I am an intelligence and operational agent (sic) of the DGSE (general directorate of external security, the secret services)declares in particular a young woman presented as being Cécile Kohler, before evoking the financing of strikes and an armed struggle in Iran.
The reasons for the arrest of the fifth French citizen remain a mystery. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has not yet provided any information on this case, but it could be one of the nine Europeans arrested in Iran at the end of September for their alleged involvement in anti-regime demonstrations. As noted by the BBC (in English)the Iranian media then evoked the arrest of“spies from abroad” from Poland, Sweden, the Netherlands, but also from France – without however specifying the number of nationals per country.
3How does France react?
Since the beginning of these cases, Paris has supported these French people and demanded their release. The condemnation of Fariba Adelkhah, for example, has been harshly criticized by the French authorities. “This incarceration is based on absolutely no evidence. It is indeed a scientific prisoner”, declared Emmanuel Macron again on January 13, during a speech to university presidents in Paris.
Two weeks later, during a telephone exchange with his Iranian counterpart, the French president expressed his “concern” regarding the situation of Benjamin Brière. More recently, Paris has denounced a “unworthy staging” concerning the supposed confession videos of Cécile Kohler and Jacques Paris, officially designated as “state hostages” French side.
>> How Tehran practices “hostage diplomacy” vis-à-vis Western countries
On Tuesday 11 October, France reiterated its call for “immediate release of all (its nationals)” held in Iran. “We must protect our community, it is in our hearts and in our actions”, declared Minister Catherine Colonna, who hoped to meet on Tuesday afternoon with Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, her Iranian counterpart. While waiting for Tehran to pick up and accede to France’s demands, the Quai d’Orsay has been calling since October 7 for French people passing through Iran to “leave the country as soon as possible given the risk of arbitrary detention to which they are exposed”.