French citizen returns home after Iran prison time

Paris, France — AFP

Frenchman Louis Arnaud has returned to Paris after his release from a more than 20-month prison stay in Iran.

Activists and some Western governments, including France, accuse Iran of exercising a strategy of taking foreign nationals as “hostages” to pursue their interests.

Arnaud was held in Iran in September 2022 and sentenced last year to five years in jail for threatening national security by actively participating in anti-state protests.

Emerging from a small plane at Le Bourget airport outside Paris, a smiling Arnaud shook hands with Foreign Minister Stephane Sejourne before embracing his parents, according to images aired on television.

Arnaud, 36, linked arms with his relatives as they entered a private room at the airport out of view of the cameras.

“I am very glad to welcome one of our hostages who was indeed held arbitrarily in Iran,” Sejourne said.

“Our diplomatic service is still at work” to free three other French citizens: Jacques Paris, Cecile Kohler and a man named only as Olivier held in Iranian jails, he added.

In a statement after his release, Arnaud’s mother Sylvie said “we have been waiting for our son to return for almost 21 months. A wait that should never have existed.

“Our thoughts are with those who are still waiting for the return of their loved ones and we will remain at their side until they can experience this same happiness,” she added.

The circumstances of Arnaud’s freeing were not immediately clear. Announcing his release on X late Wednesday, President Emmanuel Macron made a point of thanking our “Omani friends and all those who worked towards this happy outcome”.

Oman has frequently worked as a mediator between Iran and the West in such situations. A diplomatic source informed that Arnaud had been flown back to Paris via Oman.

Arnaud set off in July 2022 on a round-the-world trip that led him to Iran.

It was “a country he had long dreamt of visiting for the richness of its history and its welcoming people”, Sylvie Arnaud said several months ago.

But he was arrested in September 2022 with other Europeans for joining anti-state demonstrations over the death of Mahsa Amini.

Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian had Kurd, had died after her arrest by the police in Tehran for allegedly breaching the nationally prescribed dress code for women.

While Arnaud’s travelling companions were soon released, he was kept in prison before his November sentencing on charges of making propaganda against the regime and harming Iranian state security.