“Mahdieh Esfandiari, a Palestinian rights activist, has returned to Iran after her release from prison in France,” Iran’s state television said.<\/p>\n
Esfandiari’s release came a week after French citizens Cecile Kohler and Jacques Paris, who spent more than three years in Iranian prisons on espionage charges, arrived back in France.<\/p>\n
Kohler and Paris were arrested in Iran<\/a> in May 2022 but were freed in November last year.\u00a0They were taken by diplomats to the French embassy in Tehran, where they lived under house arrest until their full release on 7 April.<\/p>\n French teachers Kohler and Paris describe ‘daily horror’ of Iran detention<\/a><\/p>\n Iran had previously suggested the couple could be freed as part of an exchange for Esfandiari.<\/p>\n Esfandiari, in her forties, was arrested in France in February last year on charges of promoting terrorism and released on bail in October.<\/p>\n In February this year, a French court sentenced her to one year in prison for justifying terrorism over comments she made on social media, including regarding Hamas<\/a>‘s attack on Israel<\/a> on 7 October, 2023.<\/p>\n She had lived in France since 2018, graduating from the University of Lyon and working as a translator.<\/p>\n (with AFP)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"“Mahdieh Esfandiari, a Palestinian rights activist, has returned to Iran after her release from prison in France,” Iran’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":68320,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[3278,25432,10046,382,34,3280,8083,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-68319","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tehran","8":"tag-cecile-kohler","9":"tag-esfandiari","10":"tag-espionage-charges","11":"tag-france","12":"tag-iran","13":"tag-jacques-paris","14":"tag-release","15":"tag-tehran"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116408986056851193","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68319"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68319\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}