Franco-Iranian researcher Fariba Adelkhah, detained since June in Iran, ended on Wednesday the hunger strike she had been observing since December 24 to protest against her imprisonment, her lawyer announced.
"Ms. Adelkhah responded to a written request from political and civil society activists, and ended her hunger strike at noon (8:30 am GMT) today," said lawyer Said Dehghan. The researcher's support committee recently deemed her state of health "alarming" and called on her to end the hunger strike.
Prosecuted for threatening "national security" and "propaganda" against the regime
Fariba Adelkhah, Franco-Iranian anthropologist, and his companion Roland Marchal, specialist in the Horn of Africa, who had come to join her for a private visit, were arrested by the Revolutionary Guards, the ideological army of the regime, the June 5, 2019 at Tehran Airport.
They have since been prosecuted for threats to "national security" and "propaganda" against the regime, charges fabricated according to their support committee. Their trial could open soon in 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.
This collective welcomed on Wednesday the announcement of the end of the hunger strike of the researcher, 60 years old. "It is a great relief because we were more and more worried about his state of health. But of course, mobilizations are more necessary than ever to get Fariba and Roland out of Evin, ”he said in a press release.
"Unbearable" detentions
Subject to a long prison sentence, the two researchers benefited from an international support movement and the support of Paris.
The head of French diplomacy, Jean-Yves Le Drian, had described at the beginning of February as "unbearable" the detentions of Fariba Adelkhah and Roland Marchal, arousing the wrath of Tehran who denounced any type of "pressure".
Iran detains “ten to fifteen” foreign nationals, often binational, like the Australian academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert and the Iranian-British Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, employee of the Thomson Reuters Foundation, according to Jean-François Bayart, researcher at National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) and member of the support committee for the two French citizens.
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