They are teachers, researchers, backpackers. Five French people are currently detained in Iran, accused in particular of having wanted to spy on the country. The French Minister of Foreign Affairs announced this Tuesday in France Inter this figure, it is an additional arrest compared to the four known until then.
These four people are Fariba Adelkhah, a researcher at Sciences Po and arrested in June 2019, Benjamin Brière, arrested in May 2020 during a tourist stay, and Cécile Kohler and Jacques Paris, respectively a French teacher and retired from National Education, according to a press release from their families, and arrested in May 2022. The identity of the fifth person is not yet public, but it is a Frenchman who was “passing through Tehran”, the country’s capital, he told BFMTV.com the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. .
This same ministry even spoke last week of “state hostages” to describe the situation of Cécile Kohler and Jacques Paris. He was reacting to the broadcast last week of a spy “confession” video of the two Frenchmen on Iranian television. In January, Jean-Yves le Drian, then foreign minister, had already used the term “hostage” with regard to the French imprisoned in Iran.
prisoner exchanges
The expression has been used by the media and NGOs for several years to refer to the way in which Iran uses Western prisoners, detained on arbitrary grounds, to win certain cases. In 2020, for example, France swapped Iranian engineer Jalal Rohollahnejad detained in France for researcher Roland Marchal, detained while he was joining Fariba Adelkhah in Iran.
Roland Marchal spent 9 months imprisoned in Iran, accused of espionage in particular. When you’re in a situation like this, “you feel the power of arbitrariness, the fact of being nothing,” he tells BFMTV.com.
“No answer to your questions is enough. It is up to you to prove that you are innocent and not the other way around,” says the researcher specializing in sub-Saharan Africa.
He describes a system in which any thread is pulled to the end, the simple fact of working for him at Sciences Po, which receives public subsidies, makes him, for example, someone close to the State and therefore to the intelligence services . During his detention, he had an Iranian lawyer, with whom interviews were rarely accepted. When he was able to see it, it was impossible for them to discuss the merits of the case. Roland Marchal did not have access to his investigation file.
The conditions of detention are also difficult: the Frenchman lived in a small space, filmed 24 hours a day, with little light and limited access to books. “I had a very bad experience of my detention, I became claustrophobic,” he describes. The investigator was only able to call his family three times in nine months.
Roland Marchal was finally released on March 20, 2020, thanks to a prisoner swap with France. France has handed over to Iran Jalal Rohollahnejad, arrested in 2019 in Nice for his extradition to the United States. He was accused of violating US sanctions imposed on Iran.
A Strategy Dating Back to the 1980s
This strategy of taking Western hostages is not new, it is even “part of the identity of the regime”, according to Clément Therme, a professor at the Paul Valéry University of Montpellier and a specialist in Iranian foreign policy. He cites the hostage taking of the US embassy in Tehran. This crisis lasted from November 1979 to January 1981: for more than a year, 52 Americans were held hostage by Iranian students. They were released after US sanctions against Iran were eased.
This hostage diplomacy “is part of Iran’s asymmetric response”, explains Clément Therme: it is up to the country “to combat the power of the United States without provoking a total war”.
In 2020, the NGO Human Rights Watch documented 14 cases of dual nationals or foreigners arrested in Iran since 2014 and estimated that the exact number of people detained was “likely much higher”. “In many cases, the courts have accused them of cooperating with a ‘hostile state’ without disclosing evidence,” the NGO wrote. In October 2022, there are “at least 20”, according to the Center for Human Rights in Iranan American NGO.
“The Iranian government does not recognize dual nationality and has denied the vast majority of these detainees access to consular services,” he explains.
As for the current French hostages, Roland Marchal and Clément Therme believe that it is above all a question of internal politics of the Iranian regime, of showing its opposition to European countries. Iran has been experiencing major protests for more than three weeks, ever since Mahsa Amini, a young Iranian woman, died in mid-September after being arrested by police for violating the Islamic Republic’s strict dress code, including wearing a headscarf. . women. The Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic Ali Khameneiin early October accused the United States, Israel and their “agents” of fomenting the protest movement.
Western prisoners could also be used as leverage on other issues, such as negotiations around the Iranian nuclear deal or a new prisoner swap.
Negotiations in progress?
Among the current French prisoners, two have been sentenced by the Iranian justice system. Fariba Adelkhah was sentenced in May 2020 to five years in prison for “collusion with a view to undermining national security” and “propaganda against the political system” of the Islamic Republic.
Benjamin Brière was sentenced to eight years and eight months in prison for espionage, a sentence confirmed on appeal in June. “The announced sentence is the showcase of a mock trial,” explains his sister, Blandine Brière, to BFMTV.com.
“It is played at a political level, it is not a real sentence for us. We have never had proof of his guilt, nor of his file, ”she continues resignedly.
Having seen how many other Westerners had had a story similar to his brother’s, he knows that his release “is not up for grabs in court.”
Benjamin Brière’s family is in contact with the Quai d’Orsay and assures that the ministry is acting for his release, but “after two and a half years in prison for a tourist who has done nothing, it is not enough”, believes Blandine Briere.
Same story from Roland Marchal’s side: “Fariba is still in prison, obviously I’m bitter but I don’t have all the elements, so I don’t have a well-founded opinion” on the progress of diplomatic negotiations. Contacted, the ministry would not comment on the status of talks with Iran. On October 7, he invited French citizens passing through Iran to “leave the country as soon as possible, given the risks of arbitrary detention to which they are exposed.”
Source: BFM TV
