Iran’s citizen freed by France now at embassy in Paris

Agencies :

Iranian citizen Mahdieh Esfandiari, who was arrested in France in February on charges of promoting terrorism, has been transferred to the Iranian embassy in Paris, Tehran said on Wednesday.

“Our citizen in France, Ms. Esfandiari, is now free, she is at our embassy, and hopefully, she will return once her trial is over,” said Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi.

The announcement came hours after the Iranian foreign ministry said French couple Cecile Kohler, 41, and Jacques Paris, 72, who had been in detention in Iran since May 2022, were granted “conditional release”.

France and Iran had discussed the release of Esfandiari, 40, in exchange for the French pair, with Iran’s top diplomat saying last month that a deal was in “its final stages”.

“Two foreign citizens were convicted of espionage, and I think they were subjected to Islamic kindness by the judiciary last night,” Araghchi said on Wednesday on the sidelines of a cabinet meeting in Tehran.

Born in Iran, Esfandiari had graduated from the University of Lyon and lived in France since 2018, working as a translator.

The conditions of her release require her to report to a police station regularly and prohibit her from accessing social media and leaving the country pending a trial scheduled to open on January 13.

Contacted by AFP, Esfandiari’s lawyer, Nabil Boudi, confirmed that “the prosecutor strongly opposed” the release, citing “the risk of flight”.

At her January trial, Esfandiari will have to answer to charges of online advocacy and incitement to terrorism, as well as racial hatred and criminal conspiracy, following an investigation into a Telegram account called “Axis of Resistance”.

Iran has insisted that Esfandiari’s detention on February 28 in Villeurbanne was arbitrary, while saying that the French couple were spying in Iran.

Kohler and Paris are among a number of Europeans arrested by Iran in what several European governments describe as a deliberate strategy of hostage-taking by Tehran to extract concessions from the West.