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\n Published on
\n 14\/10\/2025 – 18:01 GMT+2\n <\/p>\n
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An Iranian court sentenced two French citizens to a combined 63 years in prison on spying and national security charges, the country’s judiciary said on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The semi-official Fars news agency identified the pair as Cecile Kohler and Jacques Paris.<\/p>\n
They have been held in Iran since 2022 on charges France has denounced as “unjustified and unfounded”. <\/p>\n
French President Emmanuel Macron and Foreign Minister Jean-No\u00ebl Barrot have repeatedly called for the pair’s release. <\/p>\n
Their possible jail sentences, which can be appealed to Iran’s Supreme Court within 20 days, come as Tehran pressures French authorities to release an Iranian national.<\/p>\n
Iran’s Revolutionary Court in Tehran, which holds closed-door hearings that often see defendants unable to access the evidence allegedly gathered against them, issued the preliminary verdict, according to the judiciary’s Mizan news agency.<\/p>\n
The court accused the two of working for French intelligence and cooperating with Israel.<\/p>\n
Kohler and Paris were arrested after meeting with protesting Iranian teachers and taking part in an anti-government rally, Iranian media reported at the time. <\/p>\n
France identified the two as a teachers’ union official and her partner on vacation in Iran. Concerns for their safety grew after the 12-day Iran-Israel conflict in June that saw Israel bomb a notorious prison in Tehran.<\/p>\n
In September, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said his country was close to making a prisoner swap deal with France. <\/p>\n
Mahdieh Esfandiari, a translator living in the French city of Lyon since 2018, was arrested in February on a terror-related charge for alleged posts on Telegram about the Hamas attacks on Israel on 7 Oct 2023 that triggered the war in Gaza, French media reported.<\/p>\n
Last week, Iran released a teenage French-German cyclist who went missing in June while in the country, Paris said. Iran has not acknowledged Lennart Monterlos’ release.<\/p>\n
Tehran is known for holding dual nationals and Westerners and using them as bargaining chips in diplomatic negotiations.<\/p>\n
Additional sources \u2022 AP<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Published on 14\/10\/2025 – 18:01 GMT+2 ADVERTISEMENT An Iranian court sentenced two French citizens to a combined 63…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":499747,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5309],"tags":[2002,2000,299,36,774],"class_list":{"0":"post-499746","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-france","8":"tag-espionage","9":"tag-eu","10":"tag-europe","11":"tag-france","12":"tag-iran"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115374553348739569","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=499746"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499746\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/499747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=499746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=499746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=499746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}