France has accused the Iranian authorities of holding hostages

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France has accused the Iranian authorities of holding hostages

2024.05.08, 12:35

On May 7, France accused Iranian authorities of kidnapping and extorting foreigners, and demanded the immediate release of a French couple detained in Iran.

Gunaz.tv

The country's Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement on the matter, stating that the charges announced against the French citizens were unprecedented.

The statement called for the release of other European hostages detained in Iran on false charges.

Sisile Kohler, a French teacher, and her husband, Jacques Pari, were detained alongside several other Iranian teachers during a May 2022 meeting in Tehran with labor movement and teacher activists.

In October 2022, the Arabic-language "Al-Alam" TV channel affiliated with the Iranian authorities broadcast a video of their meeting in a restaurant, as well as forced confessions of French citizens, claiming that they had visited Iran 5 months earlier to carry out activities with the goal of "making a revolution in Iran and collapsing the Islamic Republic."

The families of those prisoners, Iran, and other human rights organizations around the world all rejected the charges brought against Kohler and Pari, claiming that the meeting was legal and in accordance with International Labour Organization memorandums.

In addition to Kohler and Pari, two other French citizens are imprisoned in Iran.

Human rights organizations claim that the Iranian government has a strategy of kidnapping foreign citizens in order to collect taxes from Western nations.

However, this is the first time that a Western country has accused Iran of hostage-taking and extortion.

GunazTV

GUNAZ.TV

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