Franco-Iranian researcher Fariba Adelkhah, who has been detained in Iran since 2019 and who had been placed under house arrest in 2020, was again imprisoned in Tehran, her support committee announced in Paris on Wednesday. Informed of the situation, the Quai d’Orsay immediately requested his “immediate release”.
“We learn with amazement and indignation the reincarceration in Evin prison of Fariba Adelkhah”, announced this committee in a press release, denouncing “cynical” actions of the Iranian authorities which would use the case of the researcher “for external ends or interior which remain opaque ”.
“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”, denounced in a press release the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Tehran “endangers” his health and his life, judges the committee
“As the Covid pandemic continues to be in full swing, the Iranian government is deliberately putting the health and even the life of Fariba Adelkhah at risk. The death in detention of the poet and director Baktash Abtin, last Saturday, having demonstrated his inability or unwillingness to guarantee the safety of his detainees, ”judges the committee.
A specialist in Shiism and post-revolutionary Iran at Sciences-po Paris, the 62-year-old researcher was sentenced to six years in prison in May 2020 for threat to “national security” and “propaganda” against the Islamic Republic. She spent more than a year in a prison before being under house arrest in October 2020 in Tehran, under the constraint of an electronic bracelet and with a horizon limited to 300 m.
Iran has several bi-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.
Tensions amid nuclear negotiations
Iran and several countries (France, United Kingdom, Germany, Russia, China, plus Washington indirectly) relaunched talks in November to save the 2015 agreement (“JCPOA”), supposed to prevent Tehran from acquiring of the atomic weapon. They aim to bring Washington back into the pact, which left it in 2018, and to bring Tehran back to respecting its commitments, which were broken in reaction to the reinstatement of American sanctions.
This announcement concerning Fariba Adelkhah comes on the same day as that of the BritishCouncil, an organization promoting British culture abroad, on the return to the United Kingdom of one of its employees, Aras Amiri, after her acquittal in Iran where she was convicted in 2019 for espionage.