Iran releases video purporting to show French citizens' confessions

Iranian state television aired a video in which two French citizens detained for "spying" in May are shown "confessing" to acting on behalf of a French security service.

The video released by the Iranian state-run IRNA news agency showed a French couple, Cécile Kohler and Jacques Paris. Both have been accused of seeking to stir labour unrest during Iranian teachers' strikes earlier this year.

Kohler and Paris are associated with the National Federation of Education, Culture and Vocational Training, a French teachers' union, which told Reuters in May they were on a tourist visit to Iran.

France's foreign ministry condemned the video confessions in an unusually harshly worded statement.

"Cécile Kohler and Jacques Paris have been arbitrarily detained in Iran since May 2022, and as such are state hostages," said the French foreign ministry.

Iran announced on May 11 the arrest of two Europeans "who entered the country with the aim of triggering chaos and destabilising society".

It later said that it had arrested two French nationals who had entered the country on tourist visas.

Kohler and Paris are among a number of Western citizens detained in Iran, in what activists claim is a deliberate policy to extract concessions from the West – accusations rejected by Tehran.

A 2020 report by the Paris-based International Federation for Human Rights and its member organisation Justice for Iran said Iranian state media had broadcast over 350 such confessions in the space of a decade.