tribune. Fariba Adelkhah and Roland Marchal, researchers at Sciences Po Paris, have been "scientific prisoners" of the Islamic Republic of Iran since June 5, 2019. They are on the verge of being "tried" on Tuesday, March 3, at 9:00 am, although the trial is likely to be postponed in extremis to avoid any demonstration in court. The coronavirus epidemic hitting the country would provide a convenient excuse for a postponement.
Even more credible than Fariba Adelkhah’s lawyer does not exclude that the latter was contaminated, and that the Iranian-British prisoner Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe complains of the symptoms of the disease, according to his family. Fariba Adelkhah and Roland Marchal, these two "scientific prisoners", are today in danger of death.
This trial already has only the name of the trial. It does not meet any of the requirements of international texts to which Iran is a signatory and which is assumed by common sense. The accused have been in pre-trial detention since June and have been cut off from almost all contact with the outside world, except for rare telephone communications and, for Fariba Adelkhah, more or less weekly conversations with his family, through a window, since January.
Psychological torture
Both were subjected to harassing interrogations, sometimes in the form of psychological torture, including cruelty in various testimonies from Evin prison. They are also subjected to real emotional torture, since they cannot see or even communicate with each other. Fariba Adelkhah has been refusing to return to her cell since the middle of January and sleeps in the corridor of the women's quarter to get to meet Roland Marchal, still detained in the wing of the Revolutionary Guards, and whom she knows "Sick and in poor condition, mentally and physically", to use the words of their lawyer.
Weakened by a 49-day hunger strike that she only suspended at the express request of her support committee, Fariba Adelkhah suffers from kidney damage. The prison authorities do not dare to transfer her to the hospital for fear that she will get the coronavirus there, if she has not already caught it. Here are the accused whom the Islamic Republic is about to bring before its so-called revolutionary justice without allowing their lawyer to have decent access to his clients to prepare their defense! This trial will only be a sinister farce.
