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Photo: THOMAS ARRIVE / AFP
The French scientist Fariba Adelkhah was arrested in Iran more than two years ago and was most recently under house arrest.
Now the 62-year-old has to be detained again without any explanation or prior notice, as the French Foreign Ministry announced on Wednesday evening in Paris.
A spokesman in Paris called for their immediate release.
The anthropologist, who also has Iranian nationality, is a specialist in Shiite Islam and research director at the Paris University of Sciences Po. In June, she and her colleague and partner Roland Marchal were arrested at Tehran airport. Both were convicted of endangering national security and spreading anti-regime propaganda. The 64-year-old Marchal was released in March during a prisoner exchange between Paris and Tehran. Adelkhah had to remain in custody.
The spokesman for the Foreign Ministry described Tehran's actions as "purely political and arbitrary".
Against the background of the ongoing nuclear negotiations, the repeated imprisonment could have "only negative" effects on relations.
A request by President Emmanuel Macron to release Adelkhah immediately had previously been rejected by the Foreign Ministry in Tehran.
At the same time, Iran accused France of meddling in its internal affairs.
New tensions in nuclear negotiations
The decision by the Iranian authorities to return Adelkhah to prison came at a sensitive time in talks to revive the Iranian nuclear program.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian complained on Tuesday that the pace of the talks in Vienna was "too slow".
This is in marked contrast to the more optimistic statements made by officials in Tehran.
In Vienna, representatives of Russia, China, Great Britain, France and Germany are negotiating with Iran to revive the international nuclear agreement.
This is supposed to prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons.
The United States withdrew from the agreement in 2018 under the then President Donald Trump and again imposed massive sanctions on Tehran.
Thereafter, Iran also gradually withdrew from the agreement.
The current US President Joe Biden has basically signaled his readiness for a new version of the agreement.
At least a dozen Western citizens are still detained in Iran.
Among the detained foreigners are nationals of all three European countries involved in the talks on the Iranian nuclear program - Great Britain, France and Germany.
mrc / dpa / AFP