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Iranian state television aired a video on Thursday in which two French citizens detained for “spying” in Iran in May are shown “confessing” to acting on behalf of a French security service. The video was broadcast amid weeks of unrest that Tehran has linked to foreign foes.
The video released by Iranian state-run IRNA news agency showed a French couple, Cécile Kohler, a teachers’ union official, and her partner, Jacques Paris, who are both associated with France’s National Federation of Education, Culture and Vocational Training.
France’s foreign ministry immediately condemned the video confessions in an unusually harshly-worded statement.
“Cécile Kohler and Jacques Paris have been arbitrarily detained in Iran since May 2022, and as such are state hostages,” said the foreign ministry.
“The staging of their supposed confessions is shameful, revolting, unacceptable and contrary to international law,” it said.
It was the first time the ministry had described French nationals in detention in Iran as “hostages” in a written statement, and the first time the pair have been officially named by France.
Teachers’ union official Kohler and her partner Paris have been accused by Iran of seeking to stir labour unrest during teachers’ strikes earlier this year.
The clips aired Thursday resembled other videos of confessions Tehran has forced prisoners to make. In the video, Kohler, wearing a headscarf, says, “I am Cécile Kohler, I am an intelligence and operations agent at the DGSE (Directorate General for External Security)…We were in Iran to prepare the ground for the revolution and the overthrow of the regime of Islamic Iran.”
Iran had announced on May 11 the arrest of two Europeans “who entered the country with the aim of triggering chaos and destabilising society”.
It later said that it had arrested two French nationals who had entered the country on tourist visas.
‘Extracting confessions’
Kohler and Paris are among a number of Western citizens detained in Iran, in what activists claim is a deliberate policy to extract concessions from the West – accusations rejected by Tehran.
Human rights groups based outside Iran have repeatedly accused the Islamic Republic of extracting “confessions” from detained foreigners and Iranian campaigners under duress and then broadcasting them on state media as a propaganda tool.
A 2020 report by the Paris-based International Federation for Human Rights and its member organisation Justice for Iran said Iranian state media had broadcast over 350 such confessions in the space of a decade.
It said such “confessions” were “systematically broadcast” by Iranian state-owned media “to instill fear and repress dissent”, adding that victims had been “subjected to torture and ill-treatment”.
Iran’s judicial authority issued an order in October 2020 banning torture, the use of “forced confessions”, solitary confinement, illegal police custody and other violations of defendants’ rights.
That came a week after controversy sparked by videos posted on social media showing police officers beating detainees in pickup trucks in the middle of a street.
More than 20 Westerners, most of them dual nationals, are held or prevented from leaving Iran.
Among them are the French-Iranian researcher Fariba Adelkhah, arrested in June 2019 and later sentenced to five years in prison for undermining national security, allegations her family has strongly denied.
Another French citizen, Benjamin Brière, was arrested in May 2020 and later sentenced to eight years and eight months in prison for espionage, charges he rejects.
US citizen Baquer Namazi, who had served a prison sentence for espionage, left Iran on Wednesday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced.
EU adopts resolution calling for sanctions
EU lawmakers, meanwhile, adopted a resolution Thursday calling for sanctions against those responsible for the death of Mahsa Amini in the custody of Iran’s morality police, and the Islamic Republic’s subsequent crackdown on antigovernment protests.
The resolution, adopted by show of hands, urges the 27-nation bloc to sanction Iranian officials and called for an investigation into Amini’s death.
“Parliament strongly condemns the widespread and disproportionate use of force by Iranian security forces against the crowds,” the resolution said in part. Lawmakers also demanded that Iran “immediately and unconditionally release and drop any charges against anyone who has been imprisoned solely for exercising their rights to freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly, as well as all other human rights defenders”.
The outpouring of anger in Iran — largely led by young women and directed at the government’s male leadership — has created a seminal moment for the country, spurring some of the largest and boldest protests against the country’s Islamic leadership seen in years.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP, AP and Reuters)
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