The state of health of French researcher Fariba Adelkhah, detained in Iran since June, is deteriorating. Her lawyer, Saïd Dehqan, said on Tuesday 25 February that she had been admitted to the Evin prison hospital 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, specialist in the Horn of Africa, who had come to join her for a private visit, had been arrested by the Revolutionary Guards, the ideological army of the regime, 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 has been set for March 3 in Tehran and is to be held before the 15th Chamber of the Tehran Revolutionary Court.

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 requests their release. The two researchers also received the medal of honor from the city of Strasbourg on Monday, February 24, 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 spying, 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.

Fariba Adelkhah and Roland Marchal, our colleagues from @CERI_SciencesPo incarcerated in Iran, received (in abstentia) the medal of honorary citizen of the city of @Strasbourg, city in which they studied. #FreeFariba #FreeRoland pic.twitter.com/4VCxeAil0j

- Sciences Po (@sciencespo) February 24, 2020

With AFP

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