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TIMES
From Times Online
July 7, 2009
France demands release of student Clotilde Reiss by
Tehran
Charles Bremner in Paris
France today demanded the immediate release of a 23-year-old student from Lille
who has been jailed in Iran on spying charges after she took photographs at a
demonstration last month.
President Sarkozy dismissed as “pure fantasy” the charges against Clotilde Reiss, a
politics student and an assistant teacher at Isfahan University, who was detained at
Tehran airport last week on her way home to France.
“Let me say in the clearest and simplest way possible: we demand the release of
our compatriot,” Mr Sarkozy told a joint news conference with Luiz Inâcio Lula da
Silva, the President of Brazil.
“These accusations of espionage are pure fantasy and there is no reason for them. I
do not doubt for an instant that she will be released ‘very, very soon.”
Mr Sarkozy added that he disapproved of such “methods”.
It emerged last night that Ms Reiss, a graduate student at the eminent Lille Political
Sciences Institute, had been arrested last Wednesday as she was leaving for home
via Beirut after a five-month stint at the university. The French authorities made her
arrest public last night after failing to win her release.
The Foreign Ministry summoned the Iranian Ambassador to Paris yesterday to
demand her released.
France also alerted its European Union partners and said it was seeking an EU-wide
response to Iran after the arrest of the academic and the detention of staff at the
British Embassy in Tehran. All but one of the nine embassy staff detained in Tehran
have now been freed.
I
a
uiotilde Reiss was arrested at
Tehran airport as she
attempted to return to France
Iran alleges that Ms Reiss took a photograph with her mobile telephone of demonstrations in Isfahan against the
re-election of President Ahmadinejad and e-mailed it to a friend in Tehran. “That is not espionage and cannot be so.
The accusation is absurd,” Dr Kouchner said. “She was a classic young student who was doing her job, who
witnessed protests like millions of Iranians.”
Until now, France has not been attacked, as Britain has been, by the Iranian authorities. Yesterday, in the Alpine
resort of Evian, President Sarkozy told Gordon Brown that Britain had France's total backing in Iran. “The Iranian
people deserve better than the leaders they have today,” he said.
Bernard Kouchner, the French Foreign Minister, said that France wanted Ms Reiss's case to be resolved rapidly and
did not intend to “make a big issue between two countries out of this”.
He added: “I do not think the Iranian authorities can think for a second that what is happening in their streets — the
opposition to a government — can be settled by arresting innocent people. An innocent French person, what's more.”
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