Germany – Saarbruecker Zeitung, November 23, 2024
Soultz – Alsatian Cécile Kohler has been in prison in Tehran since 2022. Since then, her sister Noémie has been fighting a grueling battle for her return. Cécile’s trial is due to take place in Tehran on Sunday.
It was supposed to be a normal vacation. On April 28, 2022, teacher Cécile Kohler, who comes from the municipality of Soultz near Colmar, and her partner Jacques Paris boarded a plane bound for Tehran. They planned to spend ten days there visiting well-known tourist destinations before returning home on 8 May and Cécile would be back in front of her class the next day. But on Monday, May 9, the teacher didn’t show up for work. Her colleagues were worried because she has never been absent without telling them. They contact her family, but they don’t know where Cécile is either. “When it became clear that she wasn’t on the plane back, I started to worry,” says Noémie Kohler, Cécile’s sister, on the phone.
On May 11, the phone rang at her parents’ home in Soultz, Alsace. The French Foreign Ministry informs them that their daughter and her partner have been arrested in Iran. No one knows where, when exactly or under what circumstances. Nor for what reasons.
Iran accuses Cécile Kohler of espionage
“At first you think it’s a mistake, that everything will clear up,” says 35-year-old Noémie, explaining how she tried to remain optimistic at the beginning. A few months later, this hope was dashed. In October, the Iranian authorities released a video of Cécile. It was a forced confession that she had been working as a spy in Iran. “The images were a huge shock for me, I had the impression that the ground was literally tearing up under my feet,” she says. Was she not relieved to finally receive a sign of life from her sister after so many months? “No, I wasn’t. First of all, you don’t know when the photos were even taken. And above all, her appearance was terrible. You could see that she had been tortured. These images were unbearable for me,” she says.
Since that day, Noémie’s life has changed completely. She invests her time and energy in fighting for her sister – “until she is freed”. Noémie, who lives in Lyon, travels to Paris by train every week. Every four months, she meets the French ambassador working in Iran. A rally is held in Mulhouse on the first Friday of every month. Noémie takes part in vigils all over France. The fight for Cécile’s release, who has just turned 40 in Iranian prison, is time-consuming and requires a lot of flexibility. Noémie had to give up her white-collar job and now works as a freelance graphic designer. She has told her story a hundred times, but no more tears are shed. When she talks about it, she sounds tired but still combative. “There’s not much I can do. Keep publicizing her fate so that the pressure remains high and she is not forgotten: That’s the only thing I have left, and that’s why I keep going. I won’t rest until she’s back here,” she says.
