Five French citizens are currently being held in Iran, Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna said on Tuesday, increasing by one the previous number confirmed by Paris.
"I will speak to the Iranian foreign minister this afternoon to again demand the immediate release of all our compatriots who are held in Iran. There are five at the moment," she told France Inter radio. Previously, Paris had said that four of its citizens were being detained in the Islamic republic.
The five are French-Iranian researcher Fariba Adelkhah, traveller Benjamin Brière, teacher-unionists Cécile Kohler and Jacques Paris and a fifth person who is said to have been detained during the recent demonstrations.
Adelkah, a researcher with Science-Po in Paris, was detained in June 2019, and sentenced in May 2020 to five years in prison for "conspiring against national security." Her partner and collegue Roland Marchal, who was arrested together with her, was released in March 2020.
Helicam
In May 2020, Frenchman Benjamin Brière was arrested after entering Iran on a tourist visa. He had driven from France in a van and was arrested near the border with Turkmenistan, where, according to his lawyer, he was operating a remote-controlled mini helicopter, or helicam, used to take nature photos.
In January this year, he was sentenced to eight years in jail on spying charges.
In May this year, Iran's security forces detained Cécile Kohler, who is in charge of international relations for the French teachers union FNEC FP-FO, and her partner Jacques Paris.
The pair were accused of "conspiracy against Iran's national security," judiciary spokesman Massoud Setayeshi told the government controlled Mehr News Agency in Tehran at the time.
"The prosecution is based on a judicial order and Iran has initiated legal proceedings against them," according to Setayeshi.
Today, IRNA published a video of coerced confessions of two detained French nationals, #Cécile_Kohler and #Jacques_Paris. In this video, they introduced themselves as France intelligence agents.
— HRANA English (@HRANA_English) October 6, 2022
Cécile Kohler is a member of the French education union FNEC FP-FO.#Iran pic.twitter.com/GCWLwECSbp
Last week, Iranian state television broadcast what the authorities in Tehran claim are "confessions" by Kohler and Paris, five months after the pair were arrested in the Islamic republic. France protested, calling the broadcast "unworthy, repugnant, unacceptable and contrary to international law" and demanding the "immedeate release" of the couple.
Nuclear talks
At the end of September, Iran's authorities announced that they had apprehended "nine foreign nationals" who were described as "agitators" taking part in the demonstrations that were triggered after the death in custody of death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman who was arrested by the morality police. Iran's authorities said among those detained were German, Polish, Italian, French, Dutch and Swedish citizens.
The fact that Iran has foreign citizens in detention under trumped-up charges (apart from the five French citizens there are twenty foreigners or people with dual nationality in Tehran's jails who, according to the Center for Human Rights in Iran, didn't face a fair trial), as well as the ongoing crackdown has further complicated talks between Iran and the "P5+1," (US, France, the UK, Russia and China plus Germany) over Tehran’s nuclear program.
Many Western countries have urged Tehran to respect human rights amid the protests following Amini's death. France, for example, called for EU-wide sanctions against those responsible for the repression that has killed more than 100 people according to Norway-based NGO Iran Human Rights.
(With agencies)
