Paris condemned an “unworthy” and “heinous” staging after Iran on Thursday aired a video presented as “confessions” by two French men arrested in the country in May, in which they claim to be agents of French intelligence.
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The two Frenchmen were arrested at a time when Iran was the scene of demonstrations by teachers demanding reforms to increase their salaries and the release of colleagues arrested in previous demonstrations.
The broadcast of this video also comes against the backdrop of other demonstrations sparked off on September 16 by the death of a young woman, Mahsa Amini, after being arrested by the vice squad.
Iran has repeatedly accused outside forces of fueling protests and said last week that nine foreign nationals, including those from France, Germany, Italy, Poland and the Netherlands, had been arrested.
In the video, broadcast by the website of official television’s Arabic-language channel al-Alam, a young woman who speaks French claims her name is Cecile Kohler and that she is an agent of the General Directorate for External Security (DGSE) operational intelligence. the French secret services.
France, which denounced an “unfounded” arrest in May, on Thursday called the dissemination of the images “undignified, repugnant, unacceptable and contrary to international law.”
“This masquerade reveals the contempt for human beings that characterizes the Iranian authorities,” the Foreign Ministry said, calling for the “immediate release” of Cecile Kohler and Jacques Paris.
The two French are “state hostages,” adds the Quai d’Orsay.
Iran announced on May 11 the arrest of two Europeans “who entered the country to wreak havoc and destabilize society.”
Tehran then in early July accused two “French trade unionists” who had been arrested in May of “undermining the country’s security”.
“unionist”
A French union source had identified them as Cécile Kohler, an official of the teachers’ union Fnec FP-FO, and her spouse Jacques Paris. She stated that at the time of her arrest they were traveling in Iran during the Easter holidays.
In the video released Thursday, the woman, who is seated and wearing a colorful veil, claims that she and her spouse were in Iran “to prepare the conditions for revolution and the overthrow of the Iranian regime.”
She mentions “money” that was “intended to fund strike action and demonstrations.”
According to the man featured in the video, who also speaks French, the “goals of the DGSE are to put pressure on the government” of Iran.
Iranian television has shown “confessions” from detainees in the past, including Newsweek journalist Maziar Bahari, who later claimed in a book published abroad that he was forced to make them during his 2009 detention.
In June 2020, NGOs had called on Iran to end the practice of televised “forced confessions” from prisoners broadcast by state media.
According to the London-based International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and Justice for Iran (JFI), victims interviewed say they were “subjected to torture and ill-treatment to force them to confess facts (often falsely) in front of the camera.” “.
More than twenty Western nationals, mostly dual nationals, are detained or stranded in Iran in what NGOs condemn as a policy of hostage-taking to win concessions from foreign powers.
Among them are the Franco-Iranian researcher Fariba Adelkhah, arrested in June 2019 and then sentenced to five years in prison for undermining national security, which his relatives have always vehemently denied, and the Frenchman Benjamin Brière, arrested in May 2020 and was sentenced to eight years and eight months in prison for espionage, which he denies.
Iran announced in mid-June it had arrested a suspected Marxist activist linked to the two French trade unionists, saying that “its mission was to foment rebellion and unrest in the working class”.