Released urgently for a few days, but provisionally, from Iranian jails for medical reasons and interviewed remotely and at great risk by France Inter, the Iranian human rights activist and winner of the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize, Narges Mohammadi, gave news of teacher Cécile Kohler. An Alsatian, just 40 years old, held by Tehran, imprisoned for almost three years while she was on a tourist trip with her friend Jacques Paris, himself held in Iran since then. French prisoners accused of “espionage” by the Iranian authorities but considered “hostages” by Paris.
The harshness of isolation suffered by Cécile Kohler
And the news is not very reassuring. The Nobel Peace Prize winner said she was “very worried” about the Frenchwoman who is being held “in solitary confinement” in “terrible conditions” at the high-security Evin prison. “I asked for news of Cécile from prisoners who spent a few days in cell with her. They say that physically she is extremely weakened, and I am very worried about her. Because I too have been in solitary confinement, and these are terrible conditions, real torture,” Narges Mohammadi declared on France Inter.
Recalling that the young French woman can only go out three times a week for a few minutes in the courtyard, unfortunately thus confirming the statements of her sister Noémie Kohler interviewed by 20 Minutes last September, the Nobel Peace Prize winner testified to the harshness of this detention. “Finding yourself three years like her, without being able to move, without being able to get some fresh air, could really be fatal for her. Finding yourself in isolation for so long is something inconceivable, unbearable,” she warns.
Tehran nevertheless affirmed last November that the couple was detained “in good conditions and in good health”. Hoping one day for a trial, Noémie Kohler told AFP this Wednesday that “Cécile generally puts on a good face when we have her on the phone, she wants to show that she is holding up […] but her despair is more and more important, we sense in the way she expresses herself that she no longer believes that she will one day come out.” In the meantime, tirelessly for almost three years, Cécile’s family and her support committee have been demanding the immediate release of the Alsatian teacher.
