Iran blasts France for ‘interference’ over jailed academic

Iran on Sunday blasted France for its “interference” in the arrest of the jailed academic Fariba Adelkhah, two days after the French foreign ministry said it had summoned the Iranian ambassador to discuss the matter.

France summonded on Friday the ambasador over the “intolerable” detention of two French academics, Adelkhah and Roland Marchal, expressing “grave concern” that one was now on hunger strike.

“The statement by France’s foreign ministry regarding an Iranian national is an act of interference and we see their request to have no legal basis,” Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi said in a statement.

The envoy “was reminded of France’s demand that Fariba Adelkhah and Roland Marchal are released without delay and that the Iranian authorities show total transparency over their situation,” it said in a statement.

Adelkhah and Marchal, both academics at Sciences Po in Paris, have been held by the Iranian authorities since June. The university said this month that Adelkhah and another detained academic, Australian Kylie Moore-Gilbert, had started a hunger strike.