2023-05-12 11:17:06
The good news had been expected for months. Benjamin Brière and Bernard Phelan, two French nationals detained in Iranian jails, were released, Friday, May 12, announced French President Emmanuel Macron. The two men left Iran on a plane chartered by France. After their release, the Islamic Republic of Iran still holds five French nationals.
“Free at last. Benjamin Brière and Bernard Phélan will find their loved ones, said the head of state on Twitter. It is a relief. I welcome their release. Thank you to everyone who worked on this outcome. We will continue to act for the return of our compatriots still detained in Iran. »
Benjamin Brière, 37, was arrested in May 2020 while in northeastern Iran, near the border with Turkmenistan. The man who always presented himself as a tourist was sentenced at first instance to eight years and eight months in prison, at the beginning of January, for espionage. To protest once morest this sentence, he went on a hunger strike for more than a month, at the beginning of February. A few days later, the appeals court acquitted him of all charges once morest him. Benjamin Brière, however, remained behind bars until Friday.
Bernard Phelan, who also holds Irish nationality, was arrested on October 3, 2022, while he was traveling as part of his “consultant for a tour operator”, said his sister, Caroline Massé-Phelan, in January. His arrest coincided with a large wave of protests in Iran, sparked by the death of young Iranian Mahsa (Jina) Amini while in police custody over a headscarf “inappropriate”. Bernard Phelan, suffering according to his family from heart problems and a bone pathology, had started a hunger and thirst strike, following which his state of health deteriorated. Unlike Benjamin Brière, Bernard Phelan has never been tried by Iranian justice.
“Hostage Diplomacy”
Apart from France, other Western countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Germany, Austria and Sweden, are concerned by the imprisonment in Iran of their nationals, whose number is estimated at around forty. Some of these countries, like France, as well as human rights organisations, denounce a “hostage diplomacy” led by the Islamic Republic of Iran. This country has, in the past, proceeded to the release of Western citizens from its prisons by obtaining concessions from the countries concerned.
In 2020, the Researcher Roland Marchal, arrested in Iran a year earlier, was sent back to France, when Paris had just released the Iranian engineer Jalal Rohollahnejad, whose extradition the United States demanded for violation of American sanctions once morest Iran. The Frenchman’s companion, the Franco-Iranian anthropologist Fariba Adelkhah, was arrested at the same time. Sentenced in 2020 to five years in prison, she was released from prison in February, but remains stuck in Iran.
Among the other French people imprisoned in Iran are two trade unionists, Cécile Kohler and Jacques Paris, arrested in May 2022. The Iranian authorities accuse the couple of having sought to “causing chaos and social disorder with the aim of destabilizing” the country. Aged 35, the consultant Louis Arnaud, who left for Iran as part of a world tour, has been detained in this country since the end of September 2022. No information has been communicated as to the fifth French national imprisoned in Iran.
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