Video Mock trial, hunger strikes, false hope… one year after his release, ex-hostage in Iran Benjamin Brière speaks in “Special Envoy”

Entering Iran at the end of 2019, Benjamin Brière was able to experience six months of a road trip without incident… before being arrested in the middle of the night, on May 28, 2020, in his van. The French globetrotter then found himself in a canyon in Golestan National Park, in the northeast of the country.

Transferred into the hands of an armed group linked to the intelligence services, the Revolutionary Guards, he was accused of espionage and propaganda against the Iranian regime and imprisoned. These hostage takings which do not reveal their names are a common procedure for the Islamic Republic. For Benjamin Brière, it is the start of a three-year nightmare, which he returns to in “Special Envoy”.

Sentenced to eight years in prison

Iranian intelligence accuses him of images taken with his recreational drone in a prohibited zone. The French tourist denounces “a simulacrum” trial, behind closed doors, without access to the file for his lawyer. “VSIt’s grotesque. We expose you to things that you know are not true, they know that they are not true… I am not facing a judge, I am facing a puppet, who has no power decision-maker.”

“It’s not the judge who decides. It’s a paper that we slip to him, and that he reads. My freedom was not at stake in a court of law, at any time. All of that is “It’s a circus, in fact.”

Benjamin Brière, ex-hostage in Iran

in “Special Envoy”

Sentenced to eight years in prison, the French tourist sees the months go by without anything changing… In January 2023, in desperation, he begins a first, then a second hunger strike, his “only weapon”, “the only thing they cannot control”. His sister Blandine, very active in publicizing the affair in France, will not succeed in dissuading him.

A few weeks later, as his health deteriorated, Benjamin Brière was summoned again by the judge. He learns that he is acquitted, cleared, and that his release has been ordered. He is asked to prepare his things… “I arrived one meter from the exit, he says. And there was a guy from the Revolutionary Guards who tapped me on the shoulder, who told me to go back to the cell. So.”

Released May 12, 2023

We will have to wait another four months before an agreement is reached. On May 12, 2023, Benjamin Brière and his cellmate Bernard Phelan, released, were welcomed by the French ambassador to Iran. VStaken to a private hospital in Mashhad, they must spend the night under observation.

But they are still far from feeling safe. “I expect to see the Revolutionary Guards arriving at any moment, says Benjamin Brière. And then we find ourselves in a room alone, where it’s dark. I’m coming out of three years where there is light 24 hours a day! There was never a time when I slept in the dark.” Relief will only come the next day, when the plane bringing them back to France leaves Iranian airspace…

Excerpt from “Iran: the truths of an ex-hostage”, a report to watch in “Special Envoy” on April 18, 2024.

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