For the third consecutive school year, Cécile Kohler, detained in Iran, will not be able to see her students again. The French teacher’s colleagues expressed their “despair” on Monday, September 2.
Colleagues of Cécile Kolher, a high school French teacher detained for 850 days in Iran with her partner Jacques Paris, expressed their “despair” on Monday at this third return to school without her, and once again called for her release.
“This Monday, September 2, 2024 marks the third school year without Cécile Kohler, write her colleagues at the high school in the Paris region where she taught, expressing their “concern, sadness and despair in the face of inhumane and extremely worrying detention conditions.”
“It’s never going to stop”
Cécile Kohler and Jacques Paris were arrested in May 2022 in Iran and accused of “espionage”. They are being held in Evin prison in Tehran, and their families have received very little news from them in phone calls monitored by the authorities. A third Frenchman, whose name has not been made public, is also being held in Iran, a country accused of practicing “hostage diplomacy”.
“I fear that her imprisonment will become commonplace, that people will no longer be aware of the situation,” worries a colleague of Cécile Kohler, Guillaume, a history and geography teacher, in the press release.
“Every time I see the countdown of days that have passed on social networks, I am horrified, it will never stop,” says an English teacher, Aurélie.
They are demanding their “immediate release”
The family and colleagues of Cécile Kohler and Jacques Paris are demanding “their immediate release, and in the meantime, a significant and urgent improvement in their conditions of detention.”
Frenchman Louis Arnaud was released last June. He had been detained since September 2022 in Iran, where he had been sentenced to five years in prison for propaganda and undermining Iranian state security.
Two other French nationals, Benjamin Brière and Bernard Phelan, who also has Irish nationality, were released in May 2023 for “humanitarian reasons”. They were then very weakened and diminished by a hunger strike.
Several foreign nationals, often with dual nationality, are being held in Iran. Tehran is accused of using them as a means of pressure in its relations with Western countries, particularly to obtain the release of Iranian prisoners.
Related News :