Launch of Mahdieh Esfandiari comes per week after Iran launched two French residents held on espionage costs.
Printed On 15 Apr 2026
Iranian nationwide Mahdieh Esfandiari has returned house after being held in France for greater than a yr as a part of what seems to be an alternate of detainees between the nations.
Iran’s state tv reported on Wednesday that the “rights activist”, sentenced to at least one yr in jail after making on-line feedback supportive of Palestine and the 2023 Hamas assault on Israel that prompted the genocidal struggle on Gaza, had returned to Iran.
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The College of Lyon graduate, who had been residing in France since 2018, the place she labored as a translator, was arrested in February final yr on costs of selling “terrorism”, and launched on bail in October.
“I believe it’s clear for everybody that there isn’t a freedom of speech, at the least not in France the place I used to be. The court docket’s ruling was very unjust,” Esfandiari informed state tv in a Wednesday broadcast.
Esfandiari’s launch comes per week after French residents Cecile Kohler, 41, and Jacques Paris, 72, arrived in France after being held for greater than three years in Iran.
Kohler and Paris had been arrested by Iranian authorities in Could 2022 however had been freed in November final yr, after greater than three years in jail on espionage costs that their households vehemently deny.
They had been taken by French diplomats to France’s mission in Tehran, the place they lived below home arrest till their full launch on April 7. Upon their launch, they had been pushed from Iran to neighbouring Azerbaijan earlier than taking a flight to Paris.
President Emmanuel Macron’s workplace stated their launch was the end result of a “long-term effort”, however talks accelerated in latest weeks attributable to stress from the US-Israel struggle on Iran, giving a way of urgency to the state of affairs.
Whereas an alternate was not explicitly acknowledged by France, Iran’s state-run company IRNA had beforehand stated Tehran reached an settlement with Paris for the discharge of the French residents in alternate for Esfandiari.
