France demands Iran release arrested nationals, opposition figure

PARIS - A prominent French academic has been in detention in Iran since June, when he was arrested with his Franco-Iranian colleague, a researchers' group and the French foreign ministry said Wednesday.

Roland Marchal, a sociologist whose research focuses on civil wars in Africa, and Fariba Adelkhah, an anthropologist, both work at the Sciences Po university in Paris.

The FASOPO association, of which they are both members, announced Marchal's detention on its website, saying it had remained quiet about his arrest at the request of French authorities until the story was reported on Tuesday by Le Figaro newspaper.

The association said "discretion had seemed preferable to the French authorities, who immediately began working, at the highest level, to obtain the liberation of our colleagues..."

The French government, it said, had wished to prevent the issue becoming a reason for "nationalist flare-up" in Tehran.

The foreign ministry in a statement confirmed Marchal's detention and said it strongly condemned his arrest.

"We want the Iranian authorities to show transparency in this dossier and act with delay to end the unacceptable situation," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Agnes von der Muhll said in a briefing. She added that Marchal had received consular visits and had a lawyer.

FASOPO said it had alerted French authorities to the pair's disappearance on June 25.

The association said it supported the government's decision to keep quiet given the experience of foreign colleagues "who found themselves in the same situation" and who had found Western media reporting "either useless or, worse, counter-productive".

Adelkhah's arrest was confirmed by Tehran on July 16. The reason for her detention has not been made public.

Paris has repeatedly requested that she be given consular access and set free. Iranian authorities, who do not recognise dual nationality, had railed against the "unacceptable interference" of France in the matter.

FASOPO said Marchal was arrested after arriving in Iran from Dubai to celebrate the Muslim Eid feast with Adelkhah.

It said he was known "for his strong stances that reflect his uncompromising quest for intellectual honesty and humanistic values."

Iranian-born Adelkhah is a specialist on Shia Islam who has written extensively on Iran and Afghanistan.

Opposition figure arrested

Paris on Wednesday also strongly condemned the arrest of an exiled Iranian opposition figure based in France, saying he had left the country just days before his detention by Iran's Revolutionary Guards.

The French foreign ministry said in a statement it had no precise information concerning the arrest of Ruhollah Zam who the Guards said was detained in a "sophisticated" operation.

The Guards announced the arrest on Monday of Zam, the founder of a popular social media channel, describing him as a "counter-revolutionary" who was "directed by France's intelligence service".

But there remains mystery over where and how he was apprehended. Reports suggest he may have been arrested after being lured to Iraq by Iranian operatives, although this has not been confirmed.

The French foreign ministry said Zam, the founder of an Iranian opposition media outlet called Amadnews, had refugee status in France and received a residence permit as part of the asylum procedure.

It said he had been free to leave and re-enter France and had left the country on October 11.

"We don't have precise information concerning the arrest of Mr Zam outside of French territory. We are following the issue closely," it said.

"We strongly condemn the arrest of Ruhollah Zam".

Iranian state television earlier this week showed footage of Zam sitting in an armchair next to the flags of Iran and the Revolutionary Guards, the Islamic republic's ideological army.

He identifies himself as Zam and "the founder of Amadnews". The channel has 1.4 million followers on the messaging app Telegram, and the Iranian authorities accuse the outlet of having played a major role in a wave of protests that broke out in December 2017. Telegram shut down the channel last year after Iran demanded its removal for inciting violence.

The Guards accused Zam of running an operation to sow discord in the Islamic republic, spreading falsehood and "creating riots and unrest in the country".

In the video, Zam - who rarely looks directly into the camera - expresses regret for "what has happened in the past three or four years", adding that he was "wrong" to have trusted foreign governments, "in particular trusting the French government". He also condemns the US, Israel, Turkey and Saudi Arabia as countries that should not be trusted as "they do not have good relations with the Islamic Republic."

The arrests of Zam and the academics come as President Emmanuel Macron conducts intense diplomacy to find a way of keeping alive the 2015 nuclear deal which limits Iran's atomic programme.

Iran has several other dual nationals and Western passport holders in detention. They include British-Iranian Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a project manager with the Thomson Reuters Foundation, who has been jailed in Tehran since 2016 on sedition charges, causing major tensions with Britain.