The trial of Fariba Adelkhah and Roland Marchal will open on March 3 in Tehran, their lawyer, Me Saïd Dehqan, told Agence France-Presse on Tuesday. Detained in Tehran since June 5, the Franco-Iranian researcher is being prosecuted for "propaganda against the system" political of the Islamic Republic of Iran and "collusion in order to attack national security". Only this last count is brought against his companion, Roland Marchal, also imprisoned since June. The couple had been arrested by Revolutionary Guards, the ideological army in charge of protecting the regime. Their trial is scheduled to take place before the 15th Chamber of the Tehran Revolutionary Court.
Read also: Fariba Adelkhah, a researcher hostage to a Franco-Iranian dispute
Contrary to what was announced earlier Tuesday by the spokesman of the Judicial Authority, Gholamhossein Esmaïli, the two researchers have not already been tried and sentenced, according to Dehqan, who claims to have "seen their indictment Monday at the court office.
Ten days ago, Ms. Adelkhah ended the hunger strike she had been observing since December 24 to protest against her imprisonment, her lawyer announced. The researcher's support committee recently deemed her state of health "alarming" and called on her to end the hunger strike. "Ms. Adelkhah responded to the written request from political activists and from civil society," said Mr. Saïd Dehqan. In January, Iranian justice dropped the charges of spying on the researcher.
A prisoner exchange between Berlin and Tehran
The announcement of the trial of the two French comes almost simultaneously with an exchange of prisoners between Iran and Germany. Tehran announced Tuesday that it had released a German detainee, arrested some time ago after taking photos of "sensitive sites" and sentenced to three years in prison. The day before, Berlin had released Ahmad Khalili, an Iranian detained in Germany and threatened with extradition to the United States.
Such an outcome is to be desired in the case of Ms. Adelkhah and her companion. France has an Iranian engineer in the south, whose extradition the United States is demanding, suspecting him of having violated the American embargo imposed on Iran. Jalal Rohollahnejad, 41, was arrested on February 2 at Nice airport when he returned to Tehran via Moscow, then immediately placed under extradition.
It's goodwill against goodwill
Iranian officialIt is "goodwill against goodwill," said an Iranian official recently. But so far, Paris has refused to give in.
Several binationals are detained in Iran. These detentions are generally a card in a complex game which combines internal rivalries between centers of power in Tehran and the desire to recover Iranian citizens, detained outside the country.
