Frenchman Louis Arnaud, who had been detained in Iran since September 2022, has been released, Emmanuel Macron announced Wednesday evening, urging Tehran to release “without delay” the three other French people still detained in this country.
“Our joy is immense but it will only be complete upon the return of Cécile, Jacques and Olivier,” Sylvie Arnaud told AFP, referring to the three other French nationals still imprisoned in Iran. “Louis Arnaud is free. He will be in France tomorrow after too long incarceration in Iran,” the president announced in a message posted on X.
“I thank our Omani friends and all those who worked for this happy outcome. This evening, I am also thinking of Cécile, Jacques and Olivier. I call on Iran to release them without delay,” he added.
He is currently in the Sultanate of Oman
“Louis Arnaud left Evin prison on Wednesday at dawn. He saw a doctor who found that he could take the plane,” a diplomatic source told AFP. “He is currently in the Sultanate of Oman,” added this source. “It’s a happy outcome for our compatriot,” she continued. This Thursday morning, he arrived in Paris.
After shaking the hand of the Minister of Foreign Affairs Stéphane Séjourné, present at the foot of the gangway of the small plane which transported him to Bourget airport, near Paris, he then hugged his father for a long time, then his mother, who came to wait for him there. The ex-inmate did not get directly into the ambulance provided. He headed, visibly tired but smiling, arm in arm with his loved ones, towards a living room, out of the camera’s field.
“I am very happy to welcome here one of our hostages who was arbitrarily detained in Iran,” declared Stéphane Séjourné, welcoming a “great diplomatic victory for France (…) to get our French compatriot out.”
A world tour
The thirty-year-old, consultant, began a world tour in July 2022 which took him to Iran, “a country that he had dreamed of visiting for a long time for the richness of its history and the welcome of its inhabitants”, her mother Sylvie Arnaud told us a few months ago. He was arrested in September 2022 with other Europeans accused of participating in protests after the death of Mahsa Amini, a young Iranian Kurd who died after her arrest by the morality police.
His traveling companions were quickly released but Louis Arnaud remained in prison before being sentenced last November to five years in prison for propaganda and endangering the security of the Iranian state. His conviction was deemed “unacceptable” by Paris, which had never stopped demanding his release as well as those of other French people. “The accusations made against him, namely propaganda and undermining the security of the Iranian state, are completely unfounded,” his mother reacted at the time.
The three other French people still detained in Iranian jails are the couple Cécile Kohler and Jacques Paris, arrested in May 2022 as well as a Frenchman named Olivier whose name has not been made public.
“State hostages”
“We will obviously continue our efforts for the three French people who remain incarcerated in Iran,” indicated the diplomatic source.
The release of Louis Arnaud is “the result of the work that the French authorities have carried out for several months with the Iranian authorities, including the contacts of the Minister of Foreign Affairs Stéphane Séjourné with his counterpart before his death”. Iranian President Ebrahim Raïssi and his Minister of Foreign Affairs died on May 19 in a helicopter crash.
Last May, Paris denounced in a press release “the odious practice of the Islamic Republic of forced and public confessions, as well as the inhuman and undignified conditions of detention inflicted on our compatriots”. The Quai d’Orsay, which describes these prisoners as state hostages, had requested their immediate and unconditional release.
Two other French people, Benjamin Brière and Bernard Phelan, who also has Irish nationality, were released a little over a year ago, in May 2023, for “humanitarian reasons”. They were then very weakened and diminished by a hunger strike. The Islamic Republic of Iran detains around ten Western nationals and is accused by their supporters and NGOs of using them as a bargaining chip in state-to-state negotiations.
This release came as France and its Western partners decided to toughen their tone against Tehran, which is also accused of destabilizing the Middle East. France and the United States “are determined to exert the necessary pressure” on Iran which is leading “an all-out escalation strategy”, Emmanuel Macron declared on Saturday alongside his American counterpart Joe Biden.