Iran and France indicated on Monday that talks on the release of two French citizens held in Iran in exchange for an Iranian national detained by France were progressing.
Iran has been holding Cecile Kohler and her partner Jacques Paris since 2022. An 18-year-old French-German cyclist, Lennart Monterlos, is also being held in Iran after his arrest in June.
France has repeatedly accused Iran of holding Kohler and Paris arbitrarily, keeping them in conditions akin to torture in Tehran's Evin prison and not allowing proper consular protection. Tehran denies the accusations.
On Monday, an Iranian court announced the acquittal of Monterlos, who is accused of espionage.
“The Revolutionary Court, taking into account legal principles and doubts about the crime, has issued a verdict of acquittal of the accused,” the judiciary's Mizan Online website reported, adding that the prosecutor could object to the decision.
Monterlos, 19, was arrested on June 16 in the southern city of Bandar Abbas on the third day of the war between Iran and Israel.
The charges against the teenager, who was cycling alone across Iran on a Europe-to-Asia bike trip, were never officially disclosed.
The court decision followed an earlier announcement by Tehran that it hopes for the imminent release of the French couple detained in Tehran since 2022 in exchange for the release of an Iranian woman arrested in France.
“The decision regarding the release of these two individuals and Ms. Esfandiari is being reviewed by the relevant authorities,” foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei told reporters at his weekly briefing, according to AFP.
“We hope that, once the necessary procedures are completed, this will happen soon,” he added, stressing that the two cases are separate issues.
Mahdieh Esfandiari, an Iranian woman, was arrested in France in February on charges of promoting terrorism on social media, according to French authorities.
Iran has repeatedly called her detention arbitrary, but maintains that the French couple, Kohler and Paris, were spying on behalf of Israel.
“We believe that the detention of the Iranian national in France was unlawful,” Baghaei said, adding the French couple “face clearly defined charges.”
In mid-September, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi suggested the French nationals could be exchanged for Mahdieh Esfandiari, an Iranian student living in the French city of Lyon who was arrested this year over anti-Israel social media posts.
Outgoing French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot told France Inter radio on Monday: “We have solid prospects of being able to bring them back in the coming weeks,” according to Reuters.
He added: “We remain fully mobilized and demand their immediate and unconditional release.”
France in September dropped its case before the International Court of Justice against Iran for violating the right to consular protection of its citizens, a move that signaled there had been progress in efforts to reach a deal.
The case at the ICJ was widely seen as a bid to pressure Iran over the detention of its citizens. Iran has accused the pair of spying for Israel's Mossad intelligence service.
Iran is detaining an unknown number of foreign and dual nationals, mostly on charges of espionage.
Some Western governments have accused Tehran of detaining foreigners to use as bargaining counters to secure the release of Iranians held in the West.
