“Today marks 900 days since our daughter Cécile Kohler was held hostage in Iran . Nine hundred days of suffering, deprivation and unbearable waiting,” declared her parents, Mireille and Pascal Kohler, in front of Paris City Hall , where several dozen relatives, friends and elected officials were gathered.
“We have continued to fight for her release, but we still see no light at the end of the tunnel,” they added, before unveiling a large billboard displaying portraits of their daughter and Jacques Paris.
Cécile Kohler, a modern literature teacher, was arrested during a trip with her partner in May 2022 to Iran and accused of “espionage”. They are being held in Evin Prison in Tehran, and their families have very little news during phone calls that last only a few minutes and are monitored by the authorities.
The couple are being held – separately – in section 209 of Evin prison, one of the harshest with windowless cells, according to the Kohler family, who are demanding their “immediate transfer” to the political prisoners’ quarters, “with less inhumane conditions.”
“The information we are receiving is alarming for their physical and psychological state of health,” Noémie Kohler, Cécile’s sister, explained to AFP, who was able to speak to her briefly on the phone on Sunday.
“We know that they are only allowed out three times a week, that they almost never see the light of day, and that they sleep on the floor without mattresses,” she added, specifying that their lawyers had never been allowed to visit them.
A third Frenchman, whose name has not been made public, is also being held in Iran, a country accused of practicing “hostage diplomacy “ by arresting Westerners without reason to use them as bargaining chips in state-to-state negotiations.
” France must not give in to this completely scandalous pressure,” said Jean-Luc Romero-Michel, deputy mayor of Paris, who was also present. “These people have committed no crime, they simply happened to be there at the wrong time.”
On October 17, the head of French diplomacy, Jean-Noël Barrot , received the families of the three French nationals and assured them of the “mobilization of the French authorities to obtain their immediate release.”
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