Paris Denies it Paid Tehran for Release of Two French Citizens

French Foreign and European Affairs Minister Catherine Colonna speaks during a session of questions to the government at The National Assembly in Paris on May 23, 2023. (AFP)
French Foreign and European Affairs Minister Catherine Colonna speaks during a session of questions to the government at The National Assembly in Paris on May 23, 2023. (AFP)
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Paris Denies it Paid Tehran for Release of Two French Citizens

French Foreign and European Affairs Minister Catherine Colonna speaks during a session of questions to the government at The National Assembly in Paris on May 23, 2023. (AFP)
French Foreign and European Affairs Minister Catherine Colonna speaks during a session of questions to the government at The National Assembly in Paris on May 23, 2023. (AFP)

French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna stressed on Tuesday that her country did not pay anything in exchange for the release of Frenchman Benjamin Briere and Franco-Irish Bernard Phelan, who had both been prisoners in Iran.

Tehran, for its part, explained it took the initiative to release them for “humanitarian reasons” as they were both suffering from illness. They were freed from a prison in the northeastern city of Mashhad on May 12.

Asked by a France 2 reporter whether there had been any quid pro quo to the release, Colonna said: “There was none.”

“We have pleaded a lot at different levels with the Iranian authorities given their state of health which was extremely degraded,” she added.

In principle, French authorities refuse to pay a ransom in exchange for the release of their citizens detained abroad.

In the case of Iran, there were seven citizens whom Colonna described, on several occasions, as “state hostages”, demanding their “immediate” release.

With the release of Briere and Phelan, five French citizens still remain imprisoned in Iran. They include Trade Union officials Cecile Kohler and Jacques Paris, who have been detained for over a year. A TV broadcast claimed their affiliation with French intelligence, which Paris described as a “vulgar play”.

The third citizen is Louis Arnauld, who works as a financial advisor. He was arrested in September. The fourth hostage is academic researcher Fariba Adelkhah, who was released in February, but is still banned from leaving Iran.

The anonymity of the fifth French resident is at the request of his family, Colonna said on Tuesday, adding that he was not a secret agent.

It is difficult, due to the absence of confirmed information, to talk about a quid pro quo in the release of the citizens. Colonna has underlined that Paris did not pay anything. However, similar recent events indicate the opposite, including the simultaneous release of French researcher Roland Marchal by Iran - a year after his detention - and freeing of Iranian engineer Jalal Ruhollah Nejad by France on May 20, 2020.

The United States had asked Paris to extradite Ruhollah Nejad for his role in providing Tehran with electronic components used in weapons.

The French judiciary had agreed to extradite him to the United States, but he was soon seen arriving in Tehran. French authorities did not disclose any information about his release.



Bangladesh Protest Leaders Taken from Hospital by Police

People take part in a song march to protest against the indiscriminate killings and mass arrest in Dhaka on July 26, 2024. (AFP)
People take part in a song march to protest against the indiscriminate killings and mass arrest in Dhaka on July 26, 2024. (AFP)
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Bangladesh Protest Leaders Taken from Hospital by Police

People take part in a song march to protest against the indiscriminate killings and mass arrest in Dhaka on July 26, 2024. (AFP)
People take part in a song march to protest against the indiscriminate killings and mass arrest in Dhaka on July 26, 2024. (AFP)

Bangladeshi police detectives on Friday forced the discharge from hospital of three student protest leaders blamed for deadly unrest, taking them to an unknown location, staff told AFP.

Nahid Islam, Asif Mahmud and Abu Baker Majumder are all members of Students Against Discrimination, the group responsible for organizing this month's street rallies against civil service hiring rules.

At least 195 people were killed in the ensuing police crackdown and clashes, according to an AFP count of victims reported by police and hospitals, in some of the worst unrest of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's tenure.

All three were patients at a hospital in the capital Dhaka, and at least two of them said their injuries were caused by torture in earlier police custody.

"They took them from us," Gonoshasthaya hospital supervisor Anwara Begum Lucky told AFP. "The men were from the Detective Branch."

She added that she had not wanted to discharge the student leaders but police had pressured the hospital chief to do so.

Islam's elder sister Fatema Tasnim told AFP from the hospital that six plainclothes detectives had taken all three men.

The trio's student group had suspended fresh protests at the start of this week, saying they had wanted the reform of government job quotas but not "at the expense of so much blood".

The pause was due to expire earlier on Friday but the group had given no indication of its future course of action.

Islam, 26, the chief coordinator of Students Against Discrimination, told AFP from his hospital bed on Monday that he feared for his life.

He said that two days beforehand, a group of people identifying themselves as police detectives blindfolded and handcuffed him and took him to an unknown location.

Islam added that he had come to his senses the following morning on a roadside in Dhaka.

Mahmud earlier told AFP that he had also been detained by police and beaten at the height of last week's unrest.

Three senior police officers in Dhaka all denied that the trio had been taken from the hospital and into custody on Friday.

- Garment tycoon arrested -

Police told AFP on Thursday that they had arrested at least 4,000 people since the unrest began last week, including 2,500 in Dhaka.

On Friday police said they had arrested David Hasanat, the founder and chief executive of one of Bangladesh's biggest garment factory enterprises.

His Viyellatex Group employs more than 15,000 people according to its website, and its annual turnover was estimated at $400 million by the Daily Star newspaper last year.

Dhaka Metropolitan Police inspector Abu Sayed Miah said Hasanat and several others were suspected of financing the "anarchy, arson and vandalism" of last week.

Bangladesh makes around $50 billion in annual export earnings from the textile trade, which services leading global brands including H&M, Gap and others.

Student protests began this month after the reintroduction in June of a scheme reserving more than half of government jobs for certain candidates.

With around 18 million young people in Bangladesh out of work, according to government figures, the move deeply upset graduates facing an acute jobs crisis.

Critics say the quota is used to stack public jobs with loyalists to Hasina's Awami League.

- 'Call to the nation' -

The Supreme Court cut the number of reserved jobs on Sunday but fell short of protesters' demands to scrap the quotas entirely.

Hasina has ruled Bangladesh since 2009 and won her fourth consecutive election in January after a vote without genuine opposition.

Her government is also accused by rights groups of misusing state institutions to entrench its hold on power and stamp out dissent, including the extrajudicial killing of opposition activists.

Hasina continued a tour of government buildings that had been ransacked by protesters, on Friday visiting state broadcaster Bangladesh Television, which was partly set ablaze last week.

"Find those who were involved in this," she said, according to state news agency BSS.

"Cooperate with us to ensure their punishment. I am making this call to the nation."