French citizen released from Iranian prison, says Macron
Olivier Grondeau was detained by Iranian authorities in the city of Shiraz in October 2022.
A French citizen imprisoned in Iran for more than 880 days has been freed and is back home, as is another French citizen held under house arrest in Tehran, French officials have said.
The pair’s liberation came as France and the rest of Europe are trying to jump-start talks with Iran over its rapidly advancing nuclear programme.
US President Donald Trump has sent a letter to Iran’s 85-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei seeking negotiations.
Mr Trump is also pressuring Tehran over its support of Yemen’s Houthi rebels as the American military has launched an intense new campaign of airstrikes targeting the group.
French President Emmanuel Macron announced online that Frenchman Olivier Grondeau had been freed.
The French Foreign Ministry said another French citizen who had been under house arrest in Tehran for more than four months had been released on Wednesday night. He had asked not to be publicly identified, the ministry said.
The release came ahead of Nowruz, the Persian new year, when Iran has released prisoners in the past.
In January, Mr Grondeau spoke to a French broadcaster from prison, alluding at the time to the politics at play in his imprisonment.
“You become a human who has been stocked away indefinitely because one government is seeking to exert pressure on another,” he said.
His lawyer in France, Chirinne Ardakani, said he had returned to Paris on Monday.
“He’s in good hands. He’s recovering,” the lawyer told The Associated Press.
An Iranian court had sentenced Mr Grondeau, a backpacker and world traveller, to five years in prison on espionage charges that he, his family and the French government vigorously denied.
French foreign minister Jean-Noel Barrot said France did not provide anything in exchange for Mr Grondeau’s liberation.
Mr Barrot told French broadcaster TF1 on Thursday that he had initially discussed the situation with Iran’s foreign minister but when those discussions failed to secure a release, ″it was via different means that we obtained this result″. He did not elaborate.
Releases of westerners in Iran typically come in exchange for something. Tehran did not immediately acknowledge Mr Grondeau’s release.
Earlier this week, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei said France had arrested an Iranian woman who supported Palestinians, but said Tehran was still trying to gather more details about her case.
An image was circulated of Mr Grondeau, who was detained by Iranian authorities in October 2022 in the city of Shiraz, on a private jet flying home.
Although the exact details of what sparked Mr Grondeau’s arrest remain unclear, his detention began in the chaotic aftermath of the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who died after being detained for not wearing Iran’s mandatory headscarf, or hijab, to the liking of authorities.
United Nations investigators later said Iran was responsible for the “physical violence” that led to Ms Amini’s death, which sparked months of protests and a bloody security force crackdown in the country.
“Most of the questions were, ‘Did you take part in a demonstration’, ‘List all of the Iranians that you met during your trip’, ‘Why did you come to Iran?’ ‘You’re not a tourist’,” Mr Grondeau said in the January phone call with French broadcaster France 2.
“One day you think you’re going to be freed very quickly, the next you think you’ll die here,” he added.
He described lights being shone on prisoners day and night, as well as being blindfolded each time he was taken out of his cell while in solitary confinement for 72 days. He later shared a cell with more than a dozen prisoners.
Asked if he had suffered ill treatment, he said: “If you look for bruises on my body you won’t find any, because they are not that stupid.”
Mr Grondeau was held at Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison, which holds westerners, dual nationals and political prisoners often used by Tehran as bargaining chips in negotiations with the West.
Mr Barrot said that France was keeping up pressure on Iran to release two other French citizens held in Iran, Cecile Kohler and Jacques Paris, imprisoned for more than 1,000 days.
Mr Macron also posted about the two, writing: “All my thoughts are with them and their families on this day.”
Mr Grondeau’s lawyer said the news about his release was tempered by the continued detention of the two others.
“We’re only half-relieved,” she said.
