Benjamin Brière, a Frenchman detained in Iran for more than a year and a half, will appear before a revolutionary court on Thursday to answer charges of espionage and propaganda against the regime, which he denies, his lawyer announced on Wednesday January 19. in a press release.
Read alsoIran: Frenchman Benjamin Brière will be tried for “espionage”
Benjamin Brière, arrested in May 2020, who had started a hunger strike at the end of December to protest against his conditions of detention, is "
very weakened
", according to Me Philippe Valent.
He is going to appear “
after more than a year and a half of detention, without having access to either the indictment file or any basic right to defend himself.
Exhausted, he also knows nothing of the conditions in which this hearing will be held
, ”according to the lawyer.
Benjamin Briere denies the charges
Benjamin Brière, 36, who has always presented himself as a tourist and denies accusations of espionage, was arrested for having taken “
photographs of prohibited areas
” with a recreational drone in a natural park in Iran. He is being held in Valikabad prison, in Mashhad (north-east). Espionage is punishable by death in Iran. "
Benjamin Brière has always vigorously denied the absurdity of the accusations against him, he is neither a spy nor a threat to Iranian internal security and never has been
," assured Me Valent, adding that his client was hoping for "
a declaration of innocence and repatriation to France in order to be able to rebuild himself, physically and psychologically
".
Iran is holding more than a dozen Western passport holders, mostly dual nationals, in what NGOs condemn as a hostage-taking policy designed to extract concessions from foreign powers.
Iran and several countries (France, United Kingdom, Germany, Russia, China, plus the United States indirectly) relaunched talks in November to save the 2015 agreement (“
JCPOA
”), supposed to prevent Tehran to acquire atomic weapons, a particularly burning issue that is scrutinized throughout the region.
Benjamin Brière is the only known Westerner detained in Iran who does not have an Iranian passport.
Read alsoDetained in Iran, a Frenchman begins a hunger strike
Franco-Iranian researcher Fariba Adelkhah has been detained since June 2019 and was sentenced in May 2020 to five years in prison for breaches of national security.
Under house arrest since October 2020, she was reincarcerated in mid-January, accused by Iranian justice of having violated the rules of her house arrest.
Her companion Roland Marchal, also a researcher, had been detained with her before being released in March 2020, after Paris freed the Iranian engineer Jallal Rohollahnejad, whose extradition the United States was seeking for violating American sanctions against the 'Iran.
In recent years, the Islamic Republic has carried out several exchanges of detainees with foreign countries.
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