Frenchman Benjamin Brière, in detention in Iran for eighteen months, was sentenced to eight years and eight months in prison, announced Tuesday, January 25, his French and Iranian lawyers, for “espionage” and “propaganda” against the Islamic Republic. “This condemnation, which nothing can support, is unacceptable”, immediately reacted the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Originally from Lyon, Benjamin Brière, who always presented himself as a tourist, was arrested in May 2020 in northeastern Iran, near the border with Turkmenistan, for having taken “photographs of prohibited areas” with a recreational drone. One of his Iranian lawyers, Said Dehghan, maintains that this drone was a simple device, often used in Iran to photograph landscapes or ceremonies such as weddings.
“We are in shock, explains the lawyer, joined by The world. An hour before the start of the trial, Thursday, January 20, the court chamber and the judge in charge of the case changed. Additionally, Benjamin was convicted of “espionage through collaboration with an enemy state of the Islamic Republic”, punishable by one to ten years in prison, while he was supposed to be tried for “espionage through the taking photographs”, punishable by up to three years in prison. These last minute changes, all against my client, are incredibly illegal. »
Money change
Apart from Benjamin Brière – the only known Westerner imprisoned in Iran who does not have an Iranian passport – France is also concerned by the fate of the anthropologist Fariba Adelkhah. Arrested in 2019, the Franco-Iranian researcher was sentenced to five years in prison for “propaganda” and “collusion to undermine national security”. Under house arrest at the home of her relatives in Tehran since October 2020, she was imprisoned again in mid-January on the grounds that she did not respect the conditions of her assignment.
Benjamin Brière is being held in Vakil Abad prison in Mashhad (north-east). In December 2021, he began a hunger strike to protest against the poor conditions of his detention, in particular his deprivation of the right to telephone his relatives for the Christmas holidays.
The condemnation of the French comes while Iran is negotiating in Vienna its return, as well as that of the United States, in the agreement on the Iranian nuclear file. In 2018, former US President Donald Trump tore up the “deal”, signed three years earlier, in the Austrian capital, between Tehran, Washington, London, Paris, Moscow, Beijing and Berlin. Since then, the Islamic Republic of Iran has resumed much of its nuclear activities. With the arrival at the White House of Joe Biden, talks resumed in early 2021 between Iran and the parties involved, to try to save the agreement.
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