Iran releases 2 French nationals jailed for ‘spying, propaganda’

By Syed Zafar Mehdi

TEHRAN (AA) – Iran has released two French nationals jailed in separate cases of espionage and anti-government propaganda, one of them also holding Irish citizenship, Iranian Foreign Ministry said Friday.

The release of Benjamin Briere and Bernard Phelan was confirmed in separate phone calls Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian held with his French and Irish counterparts on Friday.

While Briere is a French citizen, Phelan holds dual French-Irish citizenship. Briere was held in May 2020 for “espionage” and the latter in October 2022 on “national security” charges.

Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani in a statement said the two Frenchmen were released "at the requests of the French side at various levels" as well as "negotiations between the foreign ministers of the two countries."

He said the Iranian judiciary decided to free the two men "in good faith and as a humanitarian action" and in line with the country's laws.

French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna in a statement said the duo was “on their way to France.” French President Emmanuel Macron was also quoted as saying the two men were "finally free."

In a phone call with her Iranian counterpart earlier on Friday, Colonna thanked Tehran for releasing the two Frenchmen on “humanitarian” grounds and termed it a “confidence-building measure,” according to a statement by Iran’s Foreign Ministry.

Amir-Abdollahian, for his part, said France’s “realistic approach” towards Iran was a “positive step.”

In a separate phone call with the top Iranian diplomat on Friday, Irish Foreign Minister Micheal Martin also “appreciated the humanitarian decision” to release the Irish citizen, the ministry said.

Briere, 37, was arrested in May 2020 and sentenced to eight years and eight months in prison for espionage. His family said he denied the charges.

Phelan, a 64-year-old travel consultant, was arrested during the protests in October last year from northeastern Iran’s Mashhad city on national security charges and sentenced to six and a half years.

According to reports, he was arrested while taking pictures of a mosque in Mashhad, a major pilgrimage site in Iran, at a time when protests had gripped the country.

There were also reports recently of the two men holding a hunger strike inside the jail.

In a Twitter post on Friday, Iran’s Embassy in Dublin said that “constructive diplomatic engagement” between the two countries led to the pardoning and release of Phelan.

The embassy hastened to add that he had been freed “on consular and humanitarian grounds.”

Many foreign nationals have been held in Iran in recent years for spying and security-related charges, many of them French nationals.

In October last year, Iranian authorities released a video that showed two French nationals – Cecile Kohler and Chuck Paris – arrested for alleged spying. They are unionists in France.

In January, Iran executed Alireza Akbari, a British-Iranian dual national, for being an MI6 spy.