Iran 'frees' French researcher in apparent prisoner swap

Paris, March 21

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President Emmanuel Macron announced on Saturday that Iran had freed a French researcher imprisoned in the Islamic republic after France released an Iranian threatened with extradition to the US.

Macron “is happy to announce the release of Roland Marchal, imprisoned in Iran since June 2019” but he “urges the Iranian authorities to immediately free” fellow researcher Fariba Adelkhah, his office said.

France has for months demanded that Iran release Adelkhah and her partner Marchal detained last year and accused of plotting against national security. Their trial began in early March.

Adelkhah is a citizen of both Iran and France, but Tehran does not recognise dual nationality. Iran has in recent months carried out prisoner exchanges with the US, Australia and Germany.Iranian judiciary’s news agency Mizan Online reported Iranian Jallal Rohollahnejad had been freed by France on Friday. The Iranian state TV later said he was already on a flight back to Tehran.

Rohollahnejad, “an Iranian engineer incarcerated for more than a year in French prisons and accused of circumventing American sanctions against Iran, has been freed today,” the news agency said. The French Court of Cassation had on March 11 approved “the request to extradite Rohollahnejad to the US, but the French government freed him, changing this decision”, it added.

“Taking into account the cooperation of the (Iranian) judicial system’s intention to release a French detainee through reducing sentences, the French Government ‘freed the Iranian engineer’ in an act of mutual cooperation”, the report said.

Adelkhah, 60, an anthropologist and expert on Shiite Islam, faces charges of “propaganda against the system” and “colluding to commit acts against national security”, according to the researchers’ lawyer, Said Dehghan. Her colleague Marchal, 64, a specialist on East Africa, is accused of the same national security charge. Their Paris-based support group and the French Foreign Ministry had sounded the alarm over the health of both detainees after Adelkhah went on hunger strike for 49 days. Marchal’s health is said to be deteriorating. The support group has repeatedly said that the two are innocent of the charges they face. AFP