Rally in Paris for the release of French detainees

Emotional moment on the Trocadero esplanade. Several dozen people gathered this Saturday in Paris to demand the immediate release of the French detained in Iran, and to denounce “the relentless policy of taking hostages” of the Iranian regime. Gathered behind a large banner bearing the inscription “Freedom for hostages in Iran”, the families of the detainees brandished photos of their loved ones.

“We, families and friends, are more and more likely to know the unbearable distress of having a loved one detained by the Iranian regime,” said Noémie Kohler, sister of Cécile Kohler, a teacher arrested in May with her companion Jacques. Paris, under the accusation of espionage. Officially, seven French people are detained in Iran. They “undergo inhuman conditions of detention, solitary confinement, endless interrogations, the extortion of false confessions, mock trials”, declared Noémie Kohler.

The identity of a detainee still not revealed

“Every day more is a day too many. We demand their immediate and unconditional release,” she said. The detainees “are out of breath, they are weakened psychologically, physically, without perspective”, declared for her part Blandine Brière, the sister of Benjamin Brière, arrested in May 2020 and sentenced to eight years and eight months in prison for spying.

The supporters of researcher Fariba Adelkhah, arrested in June 2019 and then sentenced to five years in prison for undermining national security, and Louis Arnaud, arrested on September 28, were also present. The other detainees are a 64-year-old Franco-Irish Bernard Phelan, detained since the beginning of October and whose state of health worries his family and the French authorities, as well as another person whose identity has not been revealed.

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