Illustration photo : Pixabay
The French government is asking its citizens not to travel to Iran until the Tehran regime has released the three French people whom it considers to be illegally detained and who it therefore considers to be “hostages”.
“The situation of our compatriots held hostage in Iran is totally unacceptable”, underlined Tuesday the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jean-Noël Barrot, in a speech during the conference of ambassadors which brings together, like every year in Paris, the responsible for their diplomatic legations around the world.
Barrot denounced that these “hostages” are “in unworthy conditions” which he likened to “torture”, and noted that “the situation has worsened” since the start last July of the mandate of the current Iranian president, Masud Pezeskhian.
This is why he justified the slogan according to which the French would not go to Iran until they were freed, and warned that bilateral relations and “the future of sanctions” to which the Iranian regime is subject would depend on this question.
There are three French people that their government considers to be “hostages of the state” in Iran. On the one hand, there is the couple formed by Cécile Kohler and Jaques Paris, arrested in spring 2022 accused of spying during a tourist trip.
On the other, there is a man whose identity the French authorities did not want to reveal and who only knows his name, Olivier.
Last June, Louis Arnaud, a thirty-year-old who was traveling the world when he was arrested in Iran in September 2022, was released, accused of participating in protests against the religious police killing of Masha. Amini, a young Iranian woman arrested for not having worn the veil in accordance with the regime’s rules. EFE and Aurora
