French Tourist Appears in Court on Spying Charges

Benjamin Briere, a French tourist who was arrested by security agents in Iran in May 2020, was due to appear before the Revolutionary Court on Thursday charged with “espionage and acting against national security”, his lawyer Saeed Dehghan told Reuters.  

The young man was traveling through Iran by van that spring when he was arrested near the Turkmenistan border. Security agencies accused him of flying a drone in a restricted area: a claim that has been used as grounds to lock up visitors to Iran before.

On December 27 last year, Dehghan had written on Twitter that his client was being deprived of contact with his family from Mashhad Prison while others around the world were celebrating Christmas. Briere’s sister, Blandine, said her brother was “fighting” every day for the right to talk to them and was only permitted one phone call every two weeks. "What is the Mashhad Revolutionary Court waiting for,” she wrote, “on the political charges against Benjamin Briere, who has now been in custody for 570 days?!"

Briere is one of just a handful of known arbitrary detainees of the Islamic Republic who are not Iranian or Iranian dual nationals. In late December a Turkish tourist and filmmaker, Bora Omeroglu, was arrested on the road to Shiraz while passing through the country on a soul-searching “silent walk”. In 2019, a British-Australian couple were arrested and jailed for three months on the same pretext as Briere.

"He was an ordinary French tourist,” Blandine Briere has told the media, “who bought a tourist drone from a supermarket.”

Last week, the Iranian judiciary also announced that Fariba Adelkhah, a French-Iranian academic arrested in 2019 on spurious security charges, would be sent back to prison for allegedly violating the rules of her electronic tag.

The ramping-up of pressure on the two French nationals comes as Iranian officials are locked in dialogue with their counterparts in Vienna over a possible return to the JCPOA. France is one of the countries involved in the talks.

Also this week, the veteran campaigner Barry Rosen, who was one of the staffers held prisoner for 444 in the 1979 US Embassy hostage crisis, commenced a hunger strike opposite the hotel where negotiations are taking place in the Austrian capital. Mr. Rosen, 75, is demanding that hostage-taking in Iran be addressed in any new deal.

Related coverage:

French Tourist Charged with Espionage in Iran

Fariba Adelkhah Sent Back to Prison 'for Violating House Arrest Rules'

My Advice to Travelers to Iran

How Can We Prevent Hostage-Taking States Like Iran?

Ex-Hostages Discuss Ways to End Iran's Diplomatic 'Piracy'

Aras Amiri Returns to the UK Acquitted by Iran of Spying Charges

No-one is a Guest in Iran: US Embassy Hostage Crisis Survivor