Outside the Assemblée Nationale in Paris, on March 25, 2025. BERTRAND GUAY / AFP
Iran has released from prison a French pair held for more than three years and sentenced to lengthy jail sentences on espionage charges their families always rejected, French President Emmanuel Macron announced on Tuesday, November 4.
Cécile Kohler, 41, and Jacques Paris, 72, a high school teacher and retired teacher, respectively, were arrested in May 2022 while on a tourist visit to Iran. They are now "on their way to the French embassy in Tehran," Macron said on X. He welcomed this "first step" and said talks were underway to ensure their return to France as "quickly as possible."
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot added in a separate post on X that they were now at the residence of the French ambassador and "awaiting their definitive release" from Iran. Their Paris-based legal team said in a statement to Agence France-Presse that the release had "ended their arbitrary detention which lasted 1,277 days."
Their release comes at a time of acute sensitivity in dealings between Tehran and the West in the wake of Israel's 12-day war in June against the Islamic Republic and the reimposition of United Nations sanctions in the standoff over the Iranian nuclear drive.
