Two French nationals were headed home from war-stricken Iran on Tuesday after spending more than three years in an Iranian prison on espionage charges, French President Emmanuel Macron said.
Cecile Kohler, 41, and Jacques Paris, 72, had been under house arrest at the French embassy in Tehran ever since they were freed in November, with their fate even more uncertain after US-Israeli strikes on Iran started on February 28.
“Cecile Kohler and Jacques Paris are free and on their way to France, after three and a half years in detention in Iran,” the French president wrote on X.
A French foreign ministry source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the couple left Iran at dawn Tuesday in a diplomatic convoy with the French ambassador and “are currently in Azerbaijan”.
The pair are set to return to France on Wednesday after spending the evening in the capital of Baku, according to the same source, though no further details were provided.
They were the last two French nationals being held in Iran.
In a separate case, Iranian national Mahdieh Esfandiari remains in France, her lawyer Nabil Boudi told AFP on Tuesday, despite previous suggestions from Tehran that she could be exchanged for Kohler and Paris in a possible prisoner swap.
Esfandiari was sentenced by a French court in February to one year in prison for justifying terrorism over comments she made on social media, including on Palestinian militant group Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.
But her house arrest order was lifted following the French couple’s departure from Iran, her lawyer told AFP.
A source from Macron’s office said on Tuesday that Esfandiari was a “separate case”, noting she had lodged an appeal, without offering further details.
The French government has never confirmed the existence of a potential exchange deal.
Kohler and Paris -- both teachers, although Paris is retired -- were arrested in May 2022 at the end of a trip to Iran that their families say was purely touristic in nature.
At the end of a closed-door trial, an Iranian court in October sentenced them to jail on espionage charges their families say were fabricated.
It jailed Paris for 17 years and Kohler 20 years for allegedly spying for France and Israel.
They were released the following month.
Officials and their supporters celebrated the news of their return to France.
“We are waiting for their return to France so we can give them a big hug,” Anne-Laure Paris, Jacques Paris’s daughter, told AFP.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said the couple were “free at last” and that he spoke with them on the phone.
“They told me of their emotion and joy at soon being reunited with their country and their loved ones,” Barrot wrote on X.
The lawyer for their support committee, Thierry Moser, told AFP that he was “overjoyed”. “I have tears in my eyes, I’m almost struggling to speak,” he said.
The pair were among a number of Europeans caught up in what activists and some Western governments describe as a deliberate strategy of hostage-taking by Iran to extract concessions from the West.
They left after US President Donald Trump on Monday warned of widespread strikes on civilian infrastructure after the expiry of a deadline he issued for the Islamic republic to reopen the vital Strait of Hormuz.
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