France – RFI, May 07, 2025
Locked in a windowless cell with the lights on day and night, French teacher Cécile Kohler and her partner Jacques Paris on Wednesday marked three years in Iran’s notorious Evin Prison. As the anniversary passes, Kohler’s sister has told RFI their situation is unbearable and deteriorating fast.
“They are at the end of their strength. Jacques’s face is more and more marked by the detention – you can feel he is dying slowly in that cell,” Noémie Kohler told RFI. “Cécile and Jacques are increasingly desperate and are less and less optimistic.”
Kohler, 40, and Paris, who is in his seventies, were arrested on 7 May 2022 at the end of a tourist trip to Iran. They are accused of spying – charges they strongly deny.
They are being held in section 209 of Tehran’s Evin Prison, an area reserved for political prisoners. They are the last known French citizens still detained in Iran and are considered “state hostages” by the French government.
Conditions ‘equivalent to torture’
France’s foreign ministry says the couple are being held in conditions that “amount to torture under international law”.
They have no furniture and continue to sleep on the floor. The lights remain on 24 hours a day and they are allowed outdoors just two or three times a week, for no more than 30 minutes at a time.
Whether they are allowed out depends on prison guards and weather. Phone calls are rare, short and tightly monitored. The most recent, on 5 May, lasted just eight minutes.
“She told us she writes poems in her head,” Noémie said. “She repeats them every night so she doesn’t forget them, because after three years, she still has nothing to write with.”
