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French ministry confirms release of academic Fariba Adelkhah from Iranian prison

Iranian authorities on Friday released from prison French-Iranian academic Fariba Adelkhah, who was first arrested in June 2019 and was serving a five-year sentence on national security charges vehemently denied by supporters, the French foreign ministry said.

Published: 11 February 2023 09:21 CET
Tehran
A foreign ministry statement said France "welcomed" the release. Photo by Arman Taherian on Unsplash

A foreign ministry statement said France “welcomed” the release, saying she had been “unjustly detained” in Tehran’s Evin prison.

A source close to her, who asked not to be named, earlier told AFP that Adelkhah had been freed from Evin but added it was not immediately clear if she would be able to leave her home and return to France.

The foreign ministry statement added: “It is essential that Mrs Fariba Adelkhah can regain all of her freedoms, including that of returning to France if she wishes.”

Up until Adelkhah’s release, seven French citizens were being held by Iran, according to the French foreign ministry.

They are among two dozen foreign nationals campaigners say Iran has jailed in a strategy of hostage-taking to extract concessions from the West.

Last month Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna had demanded the “immediate release of the seven French hostages arbitrarily detained” by Tehran in telephone talks with her Iranian counterpart Hossein Amir-Abdollahian.

Iran had erupted into protests in September, following the death in custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini after she was arrested for allegedly violating the Islamic republic’s strict dress rules.

The ensuing crackdown further limited diplomatic contacts between Iran and the West and the scope for agreeing releases of prisoners.

Releases from Evin

Adelkhah’s release came a day after Iran freed a total of seven women from Even prison.

They included campaigner Saba Kordafshari, held since 2019 after she campaigned against the obligatory hijab for women, and prominent photographer.

Alieh Motalebzadeh whose latest stint in jail began in April last year.

On Friday, Iran also released Farhad Meysami, a doctor and human rights campaigner who had been refusing food for several weeks over the authorities’ response to the protests, his lawyer said.

Images of his emaciated body while on hunger strike had caused international concern.

Motalebzadeh wrote on Twitter that Adelkhah was among half a dozen more prisoners released on Friday.

A picture also circulated on social media of a smiling Adelkhah in a car apparently being driven away from prison.

It was not clear if the releases were linked to an announcement by the office of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that he had agreed to pardon a large number of convicts, including those detained over the protests.

Rights activists have urged scepticism over the announcements, noting that many prominent figures remain in jail and activists continue to be arrested.

A specialist in Shiite Islam and a research director at Sciences Po university in Paris, Adelkhah was arrested in June 2019 along with her French colleague and partner Roland Marchal.

Marchal was released in March 2020 in an apparent prisoner swap after France released Iranian engineer Jallal Rohollahnejad, who faced extradition to the United States over accusations he had violated US sanctions against Iran.

Adelkhah was sentenced in May 2020 to five years in prison for conspiring against national security, accusations her supporters have always denounced as absurd.

She was allowed home in Tehran in October 2020 with an electronic bracelet but was then returned to jail on January 2022.

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FRENCH ELECTIONS

French election breakdown: TV clash, polling latest and ‘poo’ Le Pen

From the polls latest to the first big TV election clash, via a lot of questions about the French Constitution and the president's future - here's the situation 17 days on from Emmanuel Macron's shock election announcement.

Published: 26 June 2024 08:15 CEST
French election breakdown: TV clash, polling latest and 'poo' Le Pen

During the election period we will be publishing a bi-weekly ‘election breakdown’ to help you keep up with the latest developments. You can receive these as an email by going to the newsletter section here and selecting subscribe to ‘breaking news alerts’.

It’s now been 17 days since Macron’s surprise call for snap parliamentary elections, and four days until the first round of voting.

TV debates

The hotly-anticipated first TV debate of the election on Tuesday night turned out to be an ill-tempered affair with a lot of interruptions and men talking over each other.

The line of the night went to the left representative Manuel Bompard – who otherwise struggled to make much of an impact – when he told far-right leader Jordan Bardella (whose Italian ancestors migrated to France several generations back): “When your personal ancestors arrived in France, your political ancestors said exactly the same thing to them. I find that tragic.”

But perhaps the biggest question of all is whether any of this matters? The presidential election debate between Macron and Marine Le Pen back in 2017 is widely credited with influencing the campaign as Macron exposed her contradictory policies and economic illiteracy.

However a debate ahead of the European elections last month between Bardella and prime minister Gabriel Attal was widely agreed to have been ‘won’ by Attal, who also managed to expose flaws and contradictions in the far right party’s policies. Nevertheless, the far-right went on to convincingly beat the Macronists at the polls.

Has the political scene simply moved on so that Bardella’s brief and fact-light TikTok videos convince more people than a two-hour prime-time TV debate?

You can hear the team from The Local discussing all the election latest on the Talking France podcast – listen here or on the link below

Road to chaos

Just over two weeks ago when Macron called this election, he intended to call the bluff of the French electorate – did they really want a government made up of Marine Len Pen’s far-right Rassemblement National (RN) party?

Well, latest polling suggests that a large portion of French people want exactly that, and significantly fewer people want to continue with a Macron government.

With the caveat that pollsters themselves say this is is a difficult election to call, current polling suggests RN would take 35 percent of the vote, the leftist alliance Nouveau Front Populaire 30 percent and Macron’s centrists 20 percent.

This is potentially bad news for everyone, as those figures would give no party an overall majority in parliament and would instead likely usher in an era of political chaos.

The questions discussed in French conversation and media have now moved on from ‘who will win the election?’ to distinctly more technical concerns like – what exactly does the Constitution say about the powers of a president without a government? Can France have a ‘caretaker government’ in the long term? Is it time for a 6th republic?.

The most over-used phrase in French political discourse this week? Sans précédent (unprecedented).

Démission

From sans précédent to sans président – if this election leads to total chaos, will Macron resign? It’s certainly being discussed, but he says he will not.

For citizens of many European parliamentary democracies it seems virtually automatic that the president would resign if he cannot form a government, but the French system is very different and several French presidents have continued in post despite being obliged to appoint an opponent as prime minister.

READ ALSO Will Macron resign in case of an election disaster?

The only president of the Fifth Republic to resign early was Charles de Gaulle – the trigger was the failure of a referendum on local government, but it may be that he was simply fed up; he was 78 years old and had already been through an attempted coup and the May 1968 general strike which paralysed the country. He died a year after leaving office.

Caca craft

She might be riding high in the polls, but not everyone is enamoured of Le Pen, it seems, especially not in ‘lefty’ eastern Paris – as seen by this rather neatly crafted Marine Le Pen flag stuck into a lump of dog poo left on the pavement.

Thanks to spotter Helen Massy-Beresford, who saw this in Paris’s 20th arrondissement.

You can find all the latest election news HERE, or sign up to receive these election breakdowns as an email by going to the newsletter section here and selecting subscribe to ‘breaking news alerts’.

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