"World" editorial. Since June 5, two French intellectuals have been unjustly imprisoned in Iran for reasons that escape them. Fariba Adelkhah, Franco-Iranian anthropologist, specialist in Shiism, has been a researcher at the Center for International Research at Sciences Po (CERI), in Paris, since 1993. Roland Marchal, sociologist, renowned specialist in the Horn of Africa, is in charge of CNRS research, also at CERI. They are detained separately in Evin prison in Tehran, where Fariba Adelkhah has been on hunger strike since December 24, as well as one of her fellow inmates, Kylie Moore-Gilbert, Australian national and researcher. University of Melbourne.
The two researchers managed to get a letter outside in which they announced that they would go on strike "In the name of academic freedom" Christmas Eve ; they claim to have been victims of "Psychological torture" and of "Numerous violations of (their) human rights ". According to Jean-François Bayart, former director of CERI-Sciences Po and member of the support committee for his two French colleagues, Kylie Moore-Gilbert was seen by another inmate on December 26 in a care unit where she was placed, but we haven't heard from the Frenchwoman.
Kylie Moore-Gilbert was arrested in September 2018 and then sentenced to ten years in prison for spying. She has been held incommunicado since her arrest. Another foreign detainee, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, an Anglo-Iranian woman, said that she too would go on hunger strike on December 31; this young woman, who worked for the Reuters Thomson Foundation in London, has been imprisoned since 2016 for having "Conspired to overthrow the Iranian government".
Roland Marchal is accused of having "Conspiracy against national security". Author of numerous works on Africa and the civil wars, he came to join Fariba Adelkhah for the Eid holidays. He was arrested upon arrival at the airport. The case of Mme Adelkhah, accused of espionage, is even more complex because the Tehran authorities, who do not recognize dual nationality, refuse him any consular assistance.
Invented from scratch
These charges are obviously fanciful and fabricated. All of these Western intellectuals – fifteen in number – were arrested by the Revolutionary Guards, the harshest faction of the Iranian regime, over which official interlocutors of Western governments are said to have little influence. Their detention is part of a systematic process designed to exert pressure, either as part of diplomatic maneuvers to save the Iranian nuclear deal, or for the purpose of trading with Iranians detained abroad. Whatever the real reason, it is unacceptable.
French authorities are actively mobilized to try to end the detention of Mme Adelkhah and M. Marchal, whom President Emmanuel Macron rightly called"Intolerable". Tehran responds by accusing France of"Interference". We must organize a common front of governments whose nationals are thus methodically detained by Iran. No one in Paris, London, Canberra, or even Tehran is fooled by these false accusations. The Islamic Republic of Iran must put an end to this practice of hostage-taking which dishonors it and imperatively free these intellectuals.