MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 11th December, 2019) French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday called on Iran to immediately release two French researches accused of colluding against Iran's national security interests.
Iranian authorities disclosed in July that they had arrested Franco-Iranian academic researcher Fariba Adelkhah, a prominent anthropologist and a research professor at the Paris Institute of Political Studies, which is commonly referred to as Sciences Po. French researcher Roland Marchal, a sub-Saharan Africa specialist at Sciences Po, was reportedly arrested in June when he visited Iran to see Adelkhah.
"On this international human rights day, my thoughts are with Fariba Adelkhakh and Roland Marchal, our compatriots detained in Iran, and with their families. Their detention is unacceptable. They must be immediately released," Macron said on Twitter.
In mid-October the French Foreign Ministry condemned the detention of its citizens, and called on Tehran to demonstrate transparency and immediately end the "unacceptable situation."
The French university where the two researchers are employed issued a statement calling the detentions "scandalous, appalling and arbitrary."
