After being arrested more than two years ago in the south of Iran, Olivier Grondeau finally decided to come out of anonymity to raise awareness about his situation.
“My name is Olivier Grondeau”. His name was revealed in an audio message broadcast on France Inter after more than two years of detention in Iran this Monday. “What is the return? It is an old dream which is no longer enough to give meaning to this exhausting vigil” he laments on January 13, invoking a “state of exhaustion” and “hopes which are ‘are diminishing’. It was this chronic fatigue that pushed him to speak out, despite the risks.
The 34-year-old Frenchman was arrested in Shiraz, in the south of the country, on October 12, 2022. Having come on a world tour thanks to his tourist visa, he did not expect to be sentenced to a five-year prison sentence. prison for “espionage and conspiracy against the Islamic Republic”. Following his arrest, he was first held “72 days in police custody”, as his mother Thérèse Grondeau explained on public radio. A period during which “we had absolutely no news, since the Iranians did not contact the embassy, against all international obligations,” she adds.
By speaking in the media, Olivier Grondeau is taking a “big risk” according to his friend Tristan Bultiauw, interviewed by Sonia Devillers. “He was very afraid of returning to the isolation that he experienced very badly at the start of his incarceration. He is still traumatized by it.” However, “with despair and his health declining every day, he took it upon himself to make this decision to publicize his case, like the other hostages and other hostage families,” he adds.
The blow of “political blackmail”
This Monday, January 13, is the first time that the media mentions his situation. During the recording which dates from December 19, 2024, and broadcast today, he proclaims his innocence and says he is the victim of “political blackmail” between France and Iran.
Since his incarceration, the 34-year-old man has shared his cell with eighteen other inmates. Passionate about Persian poetry, he is just starting to receive books sent by the French embassy. Despite everything, this attention in no way diminishes the violence of a detention that he considers arbitrary and unbearable. “At the end of his strength”, he still hopes that his request for conditional release will be accepted.
In his audio message, he does not forget to mention the situation of two other French nationals: Cécile Kohler and Jacques Paris, teachers imprisoned since May 2022. According to Olivier Grondeau, already “very tired”, the couple would be subjected to conditions of detentions even harsher than his own.
In response, France summoned the Iranian ambassador on Friday January 10 to demand the immediate release of the three French people, considered “state hostages”. “Their situation is unbearable, with undignified conditions of detention, which, for some, amount to torture under international law,” denounced the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in a press release.