It was exactly a year ago today that Fariba Adelkhah, researcher franco-iranian at sciences Po in Paris, is owned by Tehran. According to the iranian lawyer and Nobel peace Prize winner Shirin Ebad, it is "a hostage" of the iranian authorities for the purposes of bargaining. "Fariba Adelkhah is a hostage of the iranian government. She has committed no crime, " said Shirin Ebadi in a video released Friday by Sciences Po in Paris, who employs the researcher, a year to the day after his arrest in Tehran. The anthropologist has been sentenced to five years in prison on may 16 for " collusion to threaten national security ". Imprisoned in evin prison in Tehran, this specialist of shi'ism, born in Iran in 1959 and living in France since 1977, has always proclaimed his innocence.
His companion, the africanist French Roland Marchal, arrested at the same time that she and researcher as she at Sciences Po in Paris, was eventually released in march. According to Tehran, it was then exchanged for a engineer iranian detained in France and threatened with extradition to the United States. For the Nobel peace Prize, the iranian government has taken hostage of " political purposes ", to " release its own prisoners, receive money or another ".
Read also The endless calvary of the French imprisoned in Iran
A trial "unfair"
fifteen foreigners, often dual nationals, have been arrested and convicted in similar circumstances in recent years, according to the committee to support Fariba Adelkhah. "The trial has been done is unjust," says the Nobel peace Prize in 2003, noting that the researcher has " no right to a lawyer during the first months of his incarceration, and during interrogations ". "For months, they were interrogated, tortured" and "forced to speak against itself," says Shirin Ebadi.
Read also "The conviction of Fariba Adelkhah in Iran is illegal"
The French minister of foreign Affairs Jean-Yves Le Drian, for his part, reiterated "formally the requirement of France for an immediate release" of Fariba Adelkhah. "The continuation of this situation can only have a negative impact on the bilateral relationship between France and Iran, and substantially reduces the trust between our two countries ", he stressed in a press release Friday morning.
A year after his arrest, the Mayor of Paris will show in the morning, the portrait of the anthropologist on its facade. Sciences Po Paris was held on the siena is a banner with the words " Fariba Adelkhah, researcher. Imprisoned in Iran since the June 5, 2019. His fight for freedom is ours ". No gathering is, however, expected due to health concerns related to the crisis of the Covid-19.
