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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)
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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.

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Russia Condemns ‘Irresponsible’ Talk of Nuclear Weapons for Ukraine

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov attends a press conference of Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks at the BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia October 24, 2024. (Reuters)
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov attends a press conference of Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks at the BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia October 24, 2024. (Reuters)
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Russia Condemns ‘Irresponsible’ Talk of Nuclear Weapons for Ukraine

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov attends a press conference of Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks at the BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia October 24, 2024. (Reuters)
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov attends a press conference of Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks at the BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia October 24, 2024. (Reuters)

Discussion in the West about arming Ukraine with nuclear weapons is "absolutely irresponsible", Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday, in response to a report in the New York Times citing unidentified officials who suggested such a possibility.

The New York Times reported last week that some unidentified Western officials had suggested US President Joe Biden could give Ukraine nuclear weapons before he leaves office.

"Several officials even suggested that Mr. Biden could return nuclear weapons to Ukraine that were taken from it after the fall of the Soviet Union. That would be an instant and enormous deterrent. But such a step would be complicated and have serious implications," the newspaper wrote.

Asked about the report, Peskov told reporters: "These are absolutely irresponsible arguments of people who have a poor understanding of reality and who do not feel a shred of responsibility when making such statements. We also note that all of these statements are anonymous."

Earlier, senior Russian security official Dmitry Medvedev said that if the West supplied nuclear weapons to Ukraine then Moscow could consider such a transfer to be tantamount to an attack on Russia, providing grounds for a nuclear response.

Ukraine inherited nuclear weapons from the Soviet Union after its 1991 collapse, but gave them up under a 1994 agreement, the Budapest Memorandum, in return for security assurances from Russia, the United States and Britain.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said last month that as Ukraine had handed over the nuclear weapons, joining NATO was the only way it could deter Russia.

The 33-month Russia-Ukraine war saw escalations on both sides last week, after Ukraine fired US and British missiles into Russia for the first time, with permission from the West, and Moscow responded by launching a new hypersonic intermediate-range missile into Ukraine.

Asked about the risk of a nuclear escalation, Peskov said the West should "listen carefully" to Putin and read Russia's newly updated nuclear doctrine, which lowered the threshold for using nuclear weapons.

Separately, Russian foreign intelligence chief Sergei Naryshkin said Moscow opposes simply freezing the conflict in Ukraine because it needs a "solid and long-term peace" that resolves the core reasons for the crisis.