Frenchman Benjamin Brière, accused of espionage and detained in Iran for more than a year and a half, will appear on Thursday, January 20, before a revolutionary court, one of his lawyers announced on Wednesday.
Arrested in May 2020, he began a hunger strike at the end of December to protest against his conditions of detention.
He is "very weakened", according to Maître Philippe Valent.
He is going to appear "after more than a year and a half of detention, without having access to either the indictment or any basic right to defend himself. Exhausted, he knows nothing either of the conditions in which he will to hold this hearing", according to the lawyer.
Benjamin Brière, 36, who has always presented himself as a tourist and denies accusations of espionage, was arrested for having taken "photographs of prohibited areas" with a recreational drone in a natural park in Iran.
He is being held in Valikabad prison, in Mashhad (north-east).
Espionage is punishable by death in Iran.
"Absurd Accusations"
"Benjamin Brière has always vigorously denied the absurdity of the accusations against him, he is neither a spy nor a threat to Iranian internal security and never has been," assured Philippe Valent, adding that his client hoped for "a declaration of innocence and repatriation to France in order to be able to rebuild, physically and psychologically".
Iran is holding more than a dozen Western passport holders, mostly dual nationals, in what NGOs condemn as a hostage-taking policy designed to extract concessions from foreign powers.
The announcement of his detention coincided with the Western diplomatic offensive which is trying to convince Tehran to respect again the terms of the 2015 agreement on the Iranian nuclear program.
Benjamin Brière is the only known Westerner detained in Iran who does not have an Iranian passport.
Money change
Franco-Iranian researcher Fariba Adelkhah has been detained since June 2019 and was sentenced in May 2020 to five years in prison for breaches of national security.
Under house arrest since October 2020, she was reincarcerated in mid-January, accused by Iranian justice of having violated the rules of her house arrest.
Her companion Roland Marchal, also a researcher, had been detained with her before being released in March 2020, after Paris freed the Iranian engineer Jallal Rohollahnejad, whose extradition the United States was seeking for violating American sanctions against the 'Iran.
In recent years, the Islamic Republic has carried out several exchanges of detainees with foreign countries.
With AFP
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