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Iran Sentences 2 French Citizens to a Combined 63 Years over Espionage Charges

An Iranian man walks next to Iran's national flags on a street in Tehran, Iran, 13 October 2025. (EPA)
An Iranian man walks next to Iran's national flags on a street in Tehran, Iran, 13 October 2025. (EPA)
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Iran Sentences 2 French Citizens to a Combined 63 Years over Espionage Charges

An Iranian man walks next to Iran's national flags on a street in Tehran, Iran, 13 October 2025. (EPA)
An Iranian man walks next to Iran's national flags on a street in Tehran, Iran, 13 October 2025. (EPA)

An Iranian court sentenced two French citizens to a combined 63 years in prison on espionage and national security charges, the country's judiciary said Tuesday, likely further straining relations between Tehran and Paris.

The semiofficial Fars news agency named the pair as Cecile Kohler and Chuck Paris. The two have been held since 2022 on charges France has denounced as “unjustified and unfounded.” The judiciary’s Mizan news agency also reported Tuesday’s sentencing but without sharing the names of the two French nationals.

Their possible prison sentences, which can be appealed to Iran’s Supreme Court within 20 days, come as Tehran pressures French authorities to release an Iranian national.

Iran's Revolutionary Court in Tehran, which holds closed-door hearings that often see defendants unable to access the evidence allegedly gathered against them, issued the preliminary verdict, Mizan reported. The court accused the two of working for French intelligence and cooperating with Israel.

The court sentenced the two defendants to over 30 years in prison apiece, Mizan reported. Typically, convicts only serve the longest single term among their charges.

Kohler and Paris were arrested after meeting with protesting Iranian teachers and taking part in an anti-government rally, Iranian media reported at the time. France identified the two as a teachers’ union official and her partner on vacation in Iran. Concerns for their safety grew after the 12-day Iran-Israel war in June that saw Israel bomb a notorious prison in Tehran.

In September, Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said his nation was close to making a prisoner swap deal with France. Mahdieh Esfandiari, a translator living in the French city of Lyon since 2018, was arrested in February on a terror-related charge for alleged posts on Telegram about the Hamas attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 that triggered the war in Gaza, according to French media reports.

Last week, Iran released a teenage French-German cyclist who disappeared in June while riding across the country, the French government said. Iran has not acknowledged Lennart Monterlos' release.

Iran is known for holding dual nationals and Westerners and using them as bargaining chips in diplomatic negotiations.

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World

German Military Creates Rapid Response Teams to Counter Drone Threats

A sign with a drone ban is displayed outside the airport in Munich, Germany October 6, 2025. REUTERS/Angelika Warmuth/File
A sign with a drone ban is displayed outside the airport in Munich, Germany October 6, 2025. REUTERS/Angelika Warmuth/File
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German Military Creates Rapid Response Teams to Counter Drone Threats

A sign with a drone ban is displayed outside the airport in Munich, Germany October 6, 2025. REUTERS/Angelika Warmuth/File
A sign with a drone ban is displayed outside the airport in Munich, Germany October 6, 2025. REUTERS/Angelika Warmuth/File

The German military is setting up rapid response teams to counter acute drone threats, a top German military official said, most recently dispatching these experts to assist in Belgium.

"These anti-drone units are being established right now," Lieutenant General Alexander Sollfrank, who heads Germany's joint operations command and oversees the country's defense planning, told Reuters in an interview.

The German defense ministry said late on Thursday it was sending counter-drone experts to Belgium after a request from the country, which has been struggling with an increase in drone sightings near military installations and civilian airports.

DRONE SIGHTINGS CAUSE HEADACHES ACROSS EUROPE

"An advance party of air force personnel have arrived in Belgium to explore the situation and coordinate a temporary mission involving drone detection and counter-drone capabilities with the Belgian forces," the ministry said in a statement.

"The main party will follow shortly."

Sightings of drones over airports and military bases have become a constant problem in Belgium in recent days and have caused major disruptions across Europe in recent months.

They forced the temporary closures of airports in several countries including Sweden on Thursday.

Some officials have blamed the incidents on "hybrid warfare" by Russia. Moscow has denied any connection with the incidents.

Sollfrank declined to go into detail when talking about the new counter-drone units, citing operational security, but said a team sent to Copenhagen last month during an EU summit had been equipped with a mix of sensors and effectors.

"They have various systems to spot and counter drones. We have the option, for example, to assume control over a drone and land it at a specific location," said the general.

The counter-drone experts also have drones at their disposal that can eject nets to catch drones and thus take them down, as well as interceptors that ram hostile drones, he added.

BELGIUM AIRPORTS LATEST TO SPOT DRONES

Belgium's Liege airport resumed flights after a temporary halt due to a drone sighting on Friday, in the second such incident this week.

Drones spotted flying over airports in the capital, Brussels, and in Liege, in the country's east, forced the diversion of many incoming planes and the grounding of some due to depart on Tuesday.

The Belgian government called an emergency meeting of key government ministers and security chiefs on Thursday to address what the defense minister called a coordinated attack.

 

World

Iran's Pezeshkian Says Tehran Seeks Peace, But Will Not Bow to Coercion

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian visits the Iranian Atomic Energy Organisation in Tehran, Iran, November 2, 2025. Iranian Atomic Organisation/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via REUTERS
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian visits the Iranian Atomic Energy Organisation in Tehran, Iran, November 2, 2025. Iranian Atomic Organisation/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via REUTERS
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Iran's Pezeshkian Says Tehran Seeks Peace, But Will Not Bow to Coercion

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian visits the Iranian Atomic Energy Organisation in Tehran, Iran, November 2, 2025. Iranian Atomic Organisation/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via REUTERS
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian visits the Iranian Atomic Energy Organisation in Tehran, Iran, November 2, 2025. Iranian Atomic Organisation/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via REUTERS

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said on Friday that Iran seeks peace, but will not be coerced into abandoning its nuclear and missile programs, state media reported. US President Donald Trump said on Thursday that Iran had been asking if US sanctions against the country could be lifted.

"We are willing to hold talks under international frameworks, but not if they say you can't have a (nuclear) science, or the right to defend yourself (with missiles) or else we will bomb you," Pezeshkian said, Reuters reported.

Iran has repeatedly dismissed the possibility of negotiations over its defensive capabilities, including its missile program, and the idea of abandoning all enrichment of uranium on its soil.

"We want to live in this world in peace and security, but not be humiliated, and it is not acceptable that they impose upon us whatever they want and we just serve them," Pezeshkian said.

Israel sees Iran as an existential threat. But Iran says its ballistic missiles, with a range of up to 2,000 km (1,200 miles), are an important deterrent and retaliatory force against the United States, Israel and other potential regional targets. It denies seeking nuclear weapons.

World

Four Arrested after Protesters Disrupt Israeli Concert in Paris

A view shows streets Rue Ferdinand Flocon, one of the pedestrianized streets, ahead of the March 23 citywide vote on a proposition from city hall to pedestrianize 500 streets, in Paris, France, March 21, 2025. (Reuters)
A view shows streets Rue Ferdinand Flocon, one of the pedestrianized streets, ahead of the March 23 citywide vote on a proposition from city hall to pedestrianize 500 streets, in Paris, France, March 21, 2025. (Reuters)
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Four Arrested after Protesters Disrupt Israeli Concert in Paris

A view shows streets Rue Ferdinand Flocon, one of the pedestrianized streets, ahead of the March 23 citywide vote on a proposition from city hall to pedestrianize 500 streets, in Paris, France, March 21, 2025. (Reuters)
A view shows streets Rue Ferdinand Flocon, one of the pedestrianized streets, ahead of the March 23 citywide vote on a proposition from city hall to pedestrianize 500 streets, in Paris, France, March 21, 2025. (Reuters)

Four people were arrested after protesters used flares to disrupt a concert by the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra in Paris on Thursday night, the latest in a wave of anti-Israel incidents linked to the Gaza conflict, French officials said on Friday.

In footage posted on social media, protesters were seen lighting flares and chanting pro-Palestinian slogans in La Philharmonie concert hall in northern Paris as some audience members and security personnel tried to remove them.

Despite the chaos and several interruptions, the concert went ahead after the protesters were evacuated, Reuters reported.

"I strongly condemn the actions committed last night during a concert at the Philharmonie de Paris. Nothing can justify them," Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said on X.

"I thank the personnel from the Paris police who enabled the rapid arrest of several perpetrators of serious disturbances inside the venue and contained the demonstrators outside. Four people have been placed in custody," he added.

The Paris prosecutor's office said three women and a man were in custody, on charges ranging from violence, destruction and organising an unauthorised protest.

Culture Minister Rachida Dati on X condemned the disruptions as going against the "fundamental rights of our Republic."

The Philharmonie said it had filed a criminal complaint.