A statement that will cause a stir. Tehran has “openly” acknowledged the arbitrary nature of the detentions of French nationals in Iran, the spokesperson for the French Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday, in response to remarks made the day before by an Iranian spokesperson. “We have taken note of the statements on Monday” from Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani. They are “worrying because they attest to the arbitrary nature” of the detentions, underlined Anne-Claire Legendre during a press briefing.
France’s “unconstructive” attitude towards Iran and its “interventionism” do not facilitate discussions on the possible release of French people detained in the country, the Iranian diplomacy official said on Monday. “I hope that we will see a positive development in this file”, he also said, stressing that, “of course, the positions and actions of countries can play a positive role” for this.
But “the French government has adopted an unconstructive attitude and shown interventionism in the recent situation of the Islamic Republic”, he added. “Naturally, the continuation of such actions will not help to settle the issue of prisoners,” Nasser Kanani concluded.
The Quai d’Orsay spokesperson recalled the French position: “We demand the immediate freedom of all our nationals who are arbitrarily detained. France is one of the countries that most strongly denounced the “repression” of the wave of protests that rocked Iran following the September 16 death of Mahsa Amini.
The young woman had died following her arrest in Tehran by the morality police, who accused her of having violated the strict dress code imposing the wearing of the veil for women in public.
Officially, six French people are detained in Iran: the teacher and trade unionist Cécile Kohler and her companion Jacques Paris, the Franco-Irish Bernard Phelan, Louis Arnaud and Benjamin Brière, as well as another national whose identity has not been made public. Franco-Iranian researcher Fariba Adelkhah, arrested in June 2019 and then sentenced to five years in prison for undermining national security, was released on February 10.
