A detention that never ends. Cécile Kohler, a French teacher detained in Iran for 18 months, “exhausted” and “desperate”, “does not understand why she is imprisoned”, worried her sister Noémie on Monday, reiterating her call to release the young woman. “Cécile is exhausted. She seemed desperate to me during the video call that she was authorized to make to me on November 1,” Noémie Kohler, president of the Support Committee for her sister, arrested in May 2022 with her partner, said in a press release. Jacques Paris for “espionage” while they were sightseeing in Iran.
Iranian justice announced in September that the investigation had been completed, paving the way for a possible trial, the date of which is not known. Cécile, who will enter her 18th month of detention on Tuesday, “called me directly. The connection was not too bad but the communication was cut off in the middle,” continued the sister of this associate professor of modern literature and trade unionist, originally from Haut-Rhin.
“Nothing justifies detention,” insisted Emmanuel Macron
“Until now, (she) showed great courage” but during the last call, “her face was serious, very pale (…) she does not understand why she has been imprisoned for 18 months,” continued Noémie , “returned” by this call. Cécile, who celebrated her 39th birthday in Iranian jails at the end of September, “is completely cut off from the world,” she added.
His loved ones are “extremely worried about his physical and moral health. We don’t know how long it will last,” continued Noémie. “Nothing justifies the detention” of “French nationals in prisons and in unacceptable conditions in Iran,” Emmanuel Macron insisted in a speech on August 28.
In addition to Cécile Kohler and Jacques Paris, two other French people are still detained in Iran, the consultant Louis Arnaud, arrested on September 28, 2022 in Tehran, and another whose identity has never been made public. Another Frenchman, Benjamin Briere, and a Franco-Irish national, Bernard Phelan, were released in May for “humanitarian reasons”. Franco-Iranian researcher Fariba Adelkhah, arrested in 2019 for endangering national security, then released last February but prevented from leaving Iranian territory, returned to France in October.