(Reuters) -France on Thursday demanded the immediate release of two of its citizens held in Iran for more than three years and said espionage charges reported to have been filed against them were unfounded.
The French government has accused the Islamic Republic of detaining Cecile Kohler and partner Jacques Paris arbitrarily, keeping them in conditions akin to torture in Tehran’s Evin security prison and barring proper consular protection.
Agence France Presse reported late on Wednesday that Iran had charged the couple with spying for Israel’s Mossad intelligence service. No such report had yet appeared in Iranian state media.
“If it is indeed confirmed that they are facing these charges, we would consider those charges to be completely unjustified and unfounded,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot told reporters in Paris.
“We demand their immediate release. This is our highest priority.”
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have detained dozens of foreign and dual nationals in recent years, often on espionage-related charges. Rights groups and Western countries accuse Tehran of using foreign detainees as bargaining chips, which it denies.
Paris has toughened its language towards Iran in recent months, notably over the advancement of Tehran’s disputed nuclear programme and its military support for Russia, but also over the detention of European citizens in the country.
(Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta; editing by Mark Heinrich)
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