Iran court upholds prison sentence of French-Iranian academic Fariba Adelkhah

An Iranian appellate court has upheld the five-year prison sentence given to French-Iranian academic Fariba Adelkhah on national security charges, judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Esmaili said Tuesday.

“The court had previously given its verdict in the trial of Ms. Fariba Adelkhah, but she appealed, and the case went to the appellate court, where the appellate court upheld the verdict,” the semi-official ISNA news agency reported Esmaili as saying.

“Adelkhah was sentenced to five years in prison on security charges and was sentenced to one and a half years in prison on another charge,” he said.

Adelkhah will only serve the longer five-year prison term and the time she has already spent in prison will count toward her prison term, Esmaili said.

Adelkhah, a specialist in Shia Islam and a research director at Sciences Po university in Paris, was arrested in June last year.

She is a citizen of Iran and France, but Tehran does not recognize dual nationality.

Adelkhah’s lawyer had said last month that his client had been sentenced to five years in prison and that she intended to appeal.

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