As Israel presses its aerial attacks on Tehran, concern is growing over the fate of foreign nationals and Iranians seen by rights groups as political prisoners imprisoned in the capital who have no chance of fleeing to safety.
Iran is believed to hold around 20 European nationals, many of whose cases have never been published, in what some Western governments describe as a strategy of hostage-taking aimed at extracting concessions from the West.
Rights groups also accuse Iran of holding dozens of political prisoners whose sole offence has been to criticise the Islamic republic’s clerical leadership.
Most are held in Evin prison, a large, heavily fortified complex notorious among activists for rights abuses that is located in a northern district of the Iranian capital. The prisoners have no means to respond to US President Donald Trump’s warning that “everyone should immediately evacuate Tehran!”
For Noemie Kohler, the sister of French national Cecile Kohler, who has been held along with her partner Jacques Paris since May 2022 on espionage charges their families reject, the wait is agonising.
“Since May 30, we’ve had no news, no sign of life from Jacques and Cecile, and the French authorities haven’t been able to obtain any information either,” Noemie Kohler told AFP, referring to the date of their last consular visit.
“We saw that at least two strikes took place about two kilometres from where they are being held (in Evin prison), so it’s extremely close. We suspect they must have heard the explosions, but we have no idea how they are doing, we have no idea what level of information they have access to.”
Their last phone contact was on May 28, when Cecile Kohler’s parents spoke to her, she said, describing the mood even then as “desperate”, as they “no longer believe that they are going to be released”.
“We don’t know if conditions in the prison have deteriorated in connection with the situation. We’re completely in the dark, and we’re truly terrified,” she said.
She called for the couple’s “humanitarian exfiltration”, warning that “they are in imminent danger of death”.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said in May that 20 Europeans — a higher number than the total of publicised cases — are held in similar circumstances in Iran, including “teachers, academics, journalists, tourists”.
He told parliament on Wednesday that France sent messages to the Iranian and Israeli authorities “alerting them to the presence of our two compatriots in Evin prison and to the need, as far as the Iranian authorities are concerned, to release them without delay to ensure their safety”.
Among other Europeans known to be held in Iran is Iranian-Swedish academic Ahmadreza Djalali, who was arrested during a visit in April 2016 and sentenced to death in 2017 on charges of spying for Israel, which his family says are false.
The current conflict, which has already seen one man, Esmail Fekri, executed on Monday on charges of spying for Israel, has made Djalali’s situation especially precarious.
Norway-based group Iran Human Rights has warned the lives of Djalali and eight other men convicted on similar charges are at risk.
“The risk of execution of these individuals is serious,” said its director Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, adding they had all been sentenced after “an unfair, non-transparent process, and based on the orders of security institutions”.
Tehran residents have fled the city en masse.
The 2023 Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi, who was serving a prison sentence but was released from Evin last year on medical leave, said she had left Tehran.
But Mohammadi’s fellow rights activist Reza Khandan, the husband of prize-winning rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh, is still jailed in Evin.
Khandan, who long campaigned for his wife while she was in jail, was himself arrested in December 2024.
“My dad is in prison. Can you tell me, how can my father evacuate Tehran?” their daughter Mehraveh Khandan said in a tearful message on Instagram.
The New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran urged “all parties to fully comply with international humanitarian law and take immediate steps to safeguard civilians, including those in custody”.
It published a letter by legal activist Mahvash Seydal, seen as a political prisoner by rights groups, calling on authorities to grant detainees such as herself temporary release “to protect the lives and dignity of political prisoners”.
AFP
AFP
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