Benjamin Brière, a 36-year-old Frenchman, was sentenced to eight years in prison for “espionage” and “propaganda” in Iran.
Sentenced after nearly two years in prison. On Tuesday, Benjamin Brière, a 36-year-old Frenchman, was sentenced to eight years in prison for “espionage” and eight months for “propaganda” in Iran. “Benjamin Brière has obviously not – nor ever – benefited from a form of fair trial before impartial judges. He had no right to defend himself, no access to the elements of the accusation, no possibility of preparing and presenting a defense before the judges of the revolutionary court”, lamented Me Philippe Valent, his French lawyer, in a statement sent to Paris Match. “Benjamin Brière’s family is today appealing to the French authorities so that measures are taken immediately to allow his repatriation”, he added, urging “the French authorities to put an end to this nightmare at last”.
To read :Benjamin Brière, imprisoned in Iran for 20 months: “We must get him out of there as soon as possible”
Benjamin Brière was arrested in May 2020 in a national park in Iran, while taking photos using a recreational drone. The young man, who was in Iran during a van trip, was indicted the following March for “espionage” and “propaganda against the system”, but had not been heard by a judge since his arrest, which his family denounced. He started a hunger strike last month to protest against his conditions of detention in Vakilabad prison. “He is quite determined in his hunger strike, even if it is starting to be very difficult for him. He needs to protest from where he is and to act as he can”, his sister Blandine Brière recently explained to us, a few days after a rally of support organized at the Trocadéro, in Paris. A hunger strike which led him “to the end of his strength”, according to his lawyer, who relays the concerns of his family for “his state of physical and psychological health, in particular at the announcement of this verdict”.
“The Iranians know that Benjamin did nothing. It’s a bargaining chip”
“It is not tolerable that Benjamin Brière remains hostage to negotiations on the part of a regime which perseveres in its attempts to arbitrarily detain a French citizen in order to make him nothing but a bargaining chip”, accuses this Tuesday Me Philippe Valent. “He is taken hostage by the Iranian authorities, had denounced his sister in an online petition demanding his release. The Iranians know that Benjamin did nothing. It is a currency of exchange.”
Benjamin Brière is the only Westerner detained in Iran who does not have Iranian nationality. Ten days ago, the Franco-Iranian researcher Fariba Adelkhah was imprisoned again in Tehran, five months after her sentence to five years in prison for “attacks on national security”, while she had been under house arrest since October 2020. She had been arrested at the same time as her companion, the researcher Roland Marchal. The latter was released in March 2020 in exchange for the release of Iranian engineer Jallal Rohollahejad – whose extradition the United States was seeking for violating American sanctions on Iran. His supporters denounced the “cynical” actions of the Iranian regime which, they denounce, use this affair “according to external or internal ends which remain opaque”, in the midst of negotiations on the Iranian nuclear power.
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