Iran drops spying charge held against French-Iranian academic

Shahla Omar

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Iran has dropped a spying charge held against a French-Iranian academic researcher, who has been arbitrarily detained by authorities since June 2019.

Fariba Adelkhah, an anthropologist specialising in Shiite Islam at Sciences-Po in Paris, was being held on four charges. "The espionage charge has been dropped," lawyer Said Dehghan told AFP. 

A second charge of "undermining public order" was also dropped by the prosecution, Dehghan said. 

Espionage is a crime punishable by the death penalty in Iran. 

However, Adelkhah remains charged on two other, less severe counts; "propaganda" against the Islamic Republic, and "conspiring against national security."

Adelkhah and fellow Sciences-Po academic Roland Marchal were arrested and detained on the same day in June 2019, but at different locations; Adelkhah at her apartment, and Marchal, who had flown into the country to see her, at Tehran's airport.

Their detention at the capital city's notorious Evin prison was the first of French nationals in Iran for a decade.

Marchal, a French national charged with 'collusion against national security', has had access to one consular visit per month during his detention. He had 'not been subject to mistreatment and is able to access medical care,' a member of French consular staff said in October.

However, Tehran considers Adelkhah, a French-Iranian, and other dual national detainees solely as Iranian citizens, prohibiting her from accessing the same consular support as Marchal. France has repeatedly called for its consular staff to be allowed to meet her.

The detention of Western nationals has increased since the US withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal in May 2018, heightening of US-Iran tensions. 

While France has played a mediatory role between Tehran and Washington, fears of Iranian retaliation after Iranian General Qasem Soleimani was killed in a US airstrike has seen French President Emmanuel Macron issue stern words of warning to Tehran. 

The further spike in tensions has deepened fears that the dozen or so Western nationals currently held in Iranian detention could be in even graver danger.

Iranian authorities have also stepped up their detention of domestic activists, journalists and researchers. Some have been sentenced in trials whose fairness has been questioned. Several thousands of Iranians were arbitrarily detained for involvement in November's fuel price hike-induced protests, many of whom have been subject to ill-treatment by Iranian authorities, according to national and international human rights groups.

In protest of the conditions of her detention, Adelkhah began a hunger strike on December 24, alongside Australian cellmate Kylie Moore-Gilbert - a University of Melbourne academic researcher detained since September 2018, trialed, and sentenced to ten years in prison. 

Announcing their strike in an open letter, the two said they had been "subjected to psychological torture and numerous violations of our basic human rights."

"We will strike on behalf of all academics and researchers across Iran and the Middle East, who like us have been unjustly imprisoned on trumped-up charges and simply doing their job as researchers," the December 24 letter read.

In a symbolically significant move, France summoned Iran's ambassador to the country in December, to demand Adelkhah and Marchal be "freed with without delay."

Tehran has so far refused French appeals for Adelkhah's release, calling them "interference in its internal affairs." Both French prisoners' bid to be released on bail was rejected, and their case will go before the Revolutionary Court, AFP reported Iranian media as saying in December.

A silent gathering organised by a Sciences-Po support committee was held for the two academics in Paris later on Tuesday.

The Elysee has issued persistent calls for the release of the two French nationals from 'intolerable' detention. 'French authorities will continue to act with determination to obtain their freedom,' asserted a December 27 foreign ministry statement.