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Iran: 8-year prison sentence against Frenchman Benjamin Brière confirmed

2022-06-28T19:02:58.261Z


This Frenchman, posing as a tourist, had been arrested in May 2020 taking, according to the Iranian regime, photographs of "inappropriate areas".


An Iranian appeal court has confirmed the 8-year prison sentence for espionage against Frenchman Benjamin Brière, detained in Iran, we learned on Tuesday from his French lawyer Philippe Valent.

Aged 37, Benjamin Brière was sentenced in January to eight years and eight months in prison for "espionage" and "propaganda" against the regime.

He had appealed.

The one who always presented himself as a tourist, had been arrested in May 2020 for having taken “photographs of prohibited areas” with a recreational drone in a natural park.

His lawyer specified that according to the motivation of the decision, which was read and translated to him by the Iranian lawyer, the court of appeal would have considered that Benjamin Brière would be an “agent in the service of an enemy State”.

VIDEO.

"It's his last resort": detained in Iran for 20 months, Benjamin Brière begins a hunger strike

"It's distressing and dramatic, the fate of Benjamin is instrumentalized," he said, stressing that this "comes at a time when nuclear negotiations are resuming".

"We ask the French, American and British authorities to make the release of the hostages a prerequisite for the resumption of negotiations" on nuclear power, he added.

Read alsoIranian nuclear: 5 minutes to understand the issues around enriched uranium stocks

France recently judged by the voice of its Minister of Foreign Affairs Catherine Colonna "unacceptable" his condemnation.

Three other French nationals are currently detained in Iran.

The Franco-Iranian researcher Fariba Adelkhah was sentenced in May 2020 to five years in prison for breaches of national security.

She has been under house arrest since October 2020. Two other French people were arrested in May, accused by Tehran of having "entered the country with the aim of triggering chaos and destabilizing society" - arrests deemed "unfounded" by Paris.

Source: leparis

All news articles on 2022-06-28

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