© Thomas Arrive
Franco-Iranian anthropologist Fariba Adelkhah, in 2012.
Stupor and indignation. This Wednesday, the support committee for Fariba Abdelkha denounces actions “Cynical” Iranian power. Detained in Iran since 2019 and placed under house arrest in 2020, the scholar specializing in Shiism at the Ceri of Sciences Po Paris has once more been imprisoned in Tehran. Iranian power would use the case of the academic “According to exterior or interior purposes which remain opaque”, adds the press release of the committee.
Arrested on June 5, 2019, the Franco-Iranian anthropologist had been sentenced by the 15th chamber of the Revolutionary Court of Tehran: five years in prison for “Collusion with a view to undermining national security”, one year for “Propaganda once morest the system” policy of the Islamic Republic. Only the heavier of the two sentences had to be carried out. His lawyer, Saeed Dehghan had announced that he would appeal (the sentence cannot be increased in second instance). Since October 2020, she was under house arrest.
This turnaround comes as Iran and several countries (France, United Kingdom, Germany, Russia, China, plus the United States indirectly) resumed talks in November to save the 2015 agreement (“JCPOA”), supposed to prevent Tehran from acquiring atomic weapons, a particularly hot issue and scrutinized throughout the region. French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said on Tuesday that the negotiations were “Too slow”, seeming to diminish the optimism he had expressed a few days earlier. The talks aim to bring back into the pact Washington, which left it in 2018, and to bring Tehran back to respect for its commitments, broken in reaction to the reinstatement of US sanctions.
On Wednesday evening the Quai d’Orsay reacted to the academic’s reincarceration by indicating that this decision by Tehran will “Reduce confidence” between Iran and France, currently in the midst of negotiations on Iranian nuclear power. “The decision to return to prison, which we condemn, can only have negative consequences on the relationship between France and Iran and reduce confidence between our two countries”the Foreign Ministry said in a statement, demanding the “Immediate release” of the anthropologist.
“As the Covid pandemic continues to be in full swing the Iranian government is deliberately endangering the health and even the life of Fariba Adelkhah – the death in custody of poet and director Baktash Abtin last Saturday having demonstrated his incapacity or his want to guarantee the safety of its detainees ”, denounced Fariba Adelkhah’s support committee. Iranian poet, filmmaker and dissident Baktash Abtin dies in prison following contracting the Covid-19 there, several human rights organizations revealed last Saturday, accusing Tehran of being responsible for this death.
Iran currently holds several binational nationals and another French citizen, Benjamin Brière. They are sometimes accused of espionage. In recent years, the Islamic Republic has carried out several exchanges of detainees with foreign countries. This announcement concerning Fariba Adelkhah comes on the same day as that of the British Council, an organization promoting British culture abroad, on the return to the United Kingdom of one of its employees, Aras Amiri, following her acquittal in Iran. where she was sentenced in 2019 for espionage.