October 14, 2022
Iranian state television has broadcast what it calls “confessions” by two French nationals, five months after they were arrested by the Islamic Republic.
In a video aired on the Arabic-language Al-Alam channel, French teachers’ union official Cecile Kohler says she is an “agent of the DGSE,” the French intelligence service General Directorate for External Security.
Kohler and her partner, Jacques Paris, have been detained in Iran since May 7 and stand accused of seeking to stir labor unrest during a wave of teachers’ strikes in the spring.
The pair were “accused of association and collusion with the aim of undermining the security of the country,” Judiciary spokesman Massoud Setayeshi said in July.
The confession broadcast October 6 came conveniently as the regime has been loudly arguing that all the disorders currently ongoing across Iran have been fomented by foreigners although, since the French couple were arrested four months before the outbreak, their alleged involvement was a bit strained. Immediately after their arrest, they were tied only to ongoing teachers’ strikes and not to any broader rebellion.
In the confession broadcast, Kohler says the couple were in Iran “to prepare the conditions for the revolution and the overthrow of the Iranian Islamist regime.”
She said they had planned to finance strikes and demonstrations and even use weapons “to fight against the police.”
According to Jacques Paris, who was also shown in the video, the DGSE’s objectives “were to put pressure on the Iranian government.”
In an unusually strong reaction, the French Foreign Ministry said, “The staging of the supposed confessions is shameful, revolting, unacceptable and contrary to international law.”
A 2020 report by the Paris-based International Federation for Human Rights and its member organization, Justice for Iran, said Iranian state media had broadcast over 350 such confessions in the last decade.
It said such “confessions” were “systematically broadcast” by Iranian state-owned media “to instill fear and repress dissent” and victims had been “subjected to torture and ill-treatment”.
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