There was "no quid pro quo" to the release of Frenchman Benjamin Brière (37) and Franco-Irish Bernard Phelan (64), Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna said Tuesday, May 23 on France 2. The two Frenchmen were detained in Iran and released on May 12.
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I want to say that," she added. "We pleaded a lot at different levels with the Iranian authorities given their state of health, which was extremely degraded," she also stressed. "They were both sick. Fortunately, they came out of this ordeal, "said Catherine Colonna, deploring that Benjamin Brière has "spent three years in Iranian jails". "This is not acceptable," she added.
Four other hostages
She recalled that the French authorities were now working on the "unconditional" release of the four other Frenchmen still detained in Iran. They are Cécile Kohler and Jacques Paris, arrested on May 7, 2022, "during a tourist stay" according to their relatives, and a 35-year-old consultant, Louis Arnaud, arrested on September 28 in Tehran, also went to Iran as a tourist. Another Frenchman is also detained but his identity has never been made public.
Asked about the reasons for her anonymity, Catherine Colonna stressed that it was "at the request of her family". "We respect privacy completely," she continued, assuring that it was not a secret agent. Finally, she said that the France was struggling so that the French-Iranian researcher Fariba Adelkhah obtained papers and could finally be free of her movements. Arrested in 2019 and sentenced to five years in prison for endangering national security, she was released on 10 February but cannot leave Iran.