An Iranian court sentenced two French citizens to sentences of more than 30 years of prison for spy for France and Israel and for conspiracy against national security.
The two Frenchmen, whose identity has not been revealed, “are employees of the French intelligence service” and were arrested in March 2023, the Mizan agency of the Iranian Judiciary reported on Tuesday, which also did not indicate when the sentences were issued.
One of the prisoners was sentenced to six years in prison for espionage for French intelligence, five years for conspiracy against national security and 20 more for intelligence collaboration with Israel.
The other French citizen was sentenced to 10 years in prison for espionage for his country, five for conspiracy against national security and 17 for collaboration with Israel.
Those convicted can appeal their sentences to the Supreme Court of Iran within 20 days of the sentencing.
The sentences were made public a week after Tehran releases 19-year-old Franco-German citizen Lennart Monterloswho was arrested on June 16 while cycling through the Persian country.
The young Frenchman was acquitted two days earlier of “espionage” charges of which he had been accused.
Furthermore, in early October, the spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, Ismail Baghaei, stated that his country hopes to exchange “soon” two French citizens imprisoned in Tehran since 2022 for an Iranian citizen detained in Paris.
Iran imprisons Cécile Kohler, 40-year-old literature teacher, and his partner, Jacques Paris70, since May 2022, last day of a tourist trip to Iran.
Paris has repeatedly accused Iran of arbitrarily detaining Kohler and Paris, holding them in conditions similar to torture in Tehran’s Evin prison and denying them due consular protection. The ayatollah regime denies the accusations.
Last May, France presented a lawsuit against Iran before the International Court of Justice (TIJ) of The Hague for the arrest of the two professors, whom Paris considers “state hostages”, a complaint that it withdrew at the end of September.
Tehran seeks, for its part, the release of the Iranian citizen Mahdie Esfandiari, 39 years old, detained in Paris since February for, according to the Islamic Republic, “supporting the Palestinian people” with messages on social networks.
“Hostage diplomacy”
Iran has been accused by Western countries of using prisoners with dual nationality and foreigners as a measure of pressure or for him prisoner exchange with other statesa practice described as “hostage diplomacy” by other nations and human rights organizations.
In the last case, Tehran released this January the Italian journalist Cecilia Sala in an apparent exchange for the Iranian citizen Mohammad Abedini, detained in Italy at the request of the United States.
At the momentnearly 20 European citizens are detained on Iranian soil.