Iran: the sentence for espionage against Benjamin Brière confirmed

UIranian Court of Appeal has confirmed the 8-year prison sentence for espionage against Frenchman Benjamin Brière, detained in Iran, we learned on Tuesday June 28 from his French lawyer Philippe Valent. “It’s distressing and dramatic, Benjamin’s fate is instrumentalised”, indicated the lawyer to Agence France-Presse, stressing that this “comes at a time when nuclear negotiations are resuming”.

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. Benjamin Brière, who always presented himself as a tourist, was arrested in May 2020 for having taken “photographs of prohibited areas” with a recreational drone in a natural park. France recently judged by the voice of its Minister of Foreign Affairs Catherine Colonna “unacceptable” the condemnation of the French national.

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Three other French detained in Iran

“We are asking the French, American and British authorities to make the release of the hostages a prerequisite for the resumption of negotiations” on nuclear power, added his French lawyer. The latter 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”.

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.

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