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The two French researchers, Fariba Adelkhah and Roland Marchal are still imprisoned in the Evin prison, located north of Tehran. wikipedia.org

Two French researchers were arrested in Iran, just six months ago, on June 5: the anthropologist Fariba Adelkhah and the sociologist Roland Marchal, who worked at the International Research Center Sciences Po (Ceri).

Fariba Adelkhah and Roland Marchal are still detained in Evin Prison, north of Tehran. Their colleagues and academic friends remain mobilized. RFI took the testimony of Richard Banégas, a professor at Sciences Po, a friend of the two researchers and co-editor of the journal Politique Africaines, which he published with Roland Marchal.

RFI : Six months after the arrest of your colleagues, where are we ?

Richard Banégas: We are still a bit in the fog. There is little direct information on their conditions of detention. As the training phase is not yet over, it is not clear what the real motives with which they are accused by the Islamic Republic. Negotiations had started from the summer on a diplomatic level. It seems that they have not given much for now.

Meanwhile, we, the academic community, colleagues and friends have tried at least to mobilize us, to organize ourselves to even keep in memory of everyone the fate that is done to our friends.

How does this support translate to imprisoned researchers ?

There is an international support committee that has been created. It has a hundred members from about fifty countries. There is a great solidarity expressed in the academic world with our two colleagues who are internationally recognized: Fariba Adelkhah for his work on Iran, on Afghanistan, and Roland Marchal for his work on Somalia, on the Horn of Africa. So, we try to keep the flame for them, to revive their work. This is not much of course.

We feel a little helpless, but we continue to fight to at least get the attention of the authorities, and especially to do everything to obtain the release of our colleagues who are academic prisoners in Iran.

To obtain the release of your colleagues, you are calling for the suspension of academic cooperation with Iran ...

From the beginning of our mobilization, we called for the suspension of official academic cooperation with Iran, stating very quickly that it was not about marginalizing or boycotting anyone, and especially marginalizing our colleagues Iranians who are in a situation obviously very difficult on their side, but rather to take note that one can not work institutionally with a country and Iranian universities in a country which imprison the researchers, and which make these foreign researchers guarantees in a game of international power relations that goes far beyond them.

So we had taken this position also to remind anyway a minimum that academic freedom, it matters and that it can not be flouted in this way. Although, of course, we are aware that by calling for this suspension of academic cooperation, it was not completely obvious to have it accepted because our Iranian colleagues are in difficulty. We think of them too in this fight.