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. France “demands the immediate release” of the researcher, announced the Quai d’Orsay on Wednesday evening.
Tehran’s decision to reincarcerate the researcher will “reduce confidence” between Iran and France, the French government warned on Wednesday, in the midst of negotiations on Iranian nuclear power.
She had been under house arrest since October 2020
“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 ”.
“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 wanting to guarantee the safety of its detainees, ”judges the committee.
Arrested in June 2019 and sentenced in May 2020 to five years in prison for attacks on national security, she had been under house arrest since October 2020.
Iran has 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.
Relaunched talks
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 British Council, 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 sentenced in 2019 for espionage.