TEHRAN -- Iran’s top human rights official on Sunday categorically rejected France’s “hasty and unfounded” statements on an Iranian national sent to prison again after violating the terms of her house arrest, saying Tehran condemns interference of any country in its judicial affairs.
Kazem Gharibabadi, the Judiciary chief’s deputy for international affairs and secretary of the country’s High Council for Human Rights, made the remarks in reaction to a Wednesday statement by France’s foreign ministry about a decision to reincarcerate Iranian national Fariba Adelkhah.
“Ms. Adelkhah is a national of the Islamic Republic of Iran and we strongly condemn the interference of other countries in the judicial process” involving an Iranian national, Gharibabadi said.
As an Iranian national, a competent court has heard Adelkhah’s charges through an independent judicial process, he added.
Gharibabadi said it was unfortunate that the academic “has knowingly violated the limits of house arrest dozens of times and despite repeated warnings from judicial authorities, she has insisted on doing so.”
“So now, like any other prisoner who has violated the same rules and repeatedly misused the situation, she has been returned to prison.”
It is “very unfortunate” that the French authorities, regardless of the goodwill of Iran’s judiciary system about a country’s citizen, are making “baseless and unfounded” remarks through hasty statements which are “definitely unacceptable”, he said.
Adelkhah, a 62-year-old anthropologist and researcher at Sciences
Po’s Center for International Studies (CERI) in Paris, was arrested in Iran in June 2019 on espionage charges. She was sentenced in May 2020 to five years’ imprisonment. In October of that year, she was placed under house arrest with an electronic bracelet.
In interventionist remarks, French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday called the decision “entirely arbitrary,” adding that “the whole of France” was “mobilized for her release.”