Detained in Tehran since June, the French academic Fariba Adelkhah has been hospitalized in Evin prison where she is imprisoned, following a serious deterioration in her health.
The state of health of French researcher Fariba Adelkhah, detained in Iran since June, is deteriorating. His lawyer, Said Dehqan, said Tuesday, February 25 she was admitted to the hospital from Evin prison where she is incarcerated in Tehran.
This Franco-Iranian anthropologist had put an end to a hunger strike of about two months in mid-February to protest against her conditions of detention and, according to her lawyer, her hospitalization seems linked to the consequences of this ordeal on her body. She could contract the new coronavirus, present in Tehran, he worried.
Fariba Adelkhah and his companion Roland Marchal, a specialist in the Horn of Africa, who had come to join her on a private visit, had been arrested by the Revolutionary Guards, the regime’s ideological army, on June 5, 2019, in l Tehran Airport.
Trial set for March 3
The two have since been prosecuted for threats to “national security” and “propaganda” against the regime, accusations fabricated according to their support committee. Their trial was set for March 3 in Tehran to be held before the 15 th of the Revolutionary Court of Tehran.
Detained in Evin prison in Tehran, Fariba Adelkhah had started a hunger strike on December 24 to demand their release “and more generally respect for academic freedom”, according to this committee.
The latter relentlessly demands their release. The two researchers also received Monday, February 24, the Medal of Honor from the city of Strasbourg, in which they studied.
Paris continues to demand their release, but faced with these requests, Iran regularly denounces what it presents as interference in its internal affairs. Tehran does not recognize dual nationality. Arrests of foreigners in Iran, including binationals, often accused of espionage, have increased since the unilateral withdrawal in 2018 of the United States from the Iranian nuclear agreement and the reinstatement of harsh American sanctions against Tehran.
