Iran’s appeals court has confirmed a five-year prison sentence for Iranian-French academic Fariba Adelkhah on security charges, the judiciary said Tuesday.
In May, Iran sentenced Adelkhah to five years in prison “for gathering and conspiring against national security”, and one year for “propaganda against the Islamic republic”. She denied the charges and said she would appeal against the sentence.
“The appeals court has upheld Adelkhah’s five-year jail sentence. Of course she has another sentence which is one-and-half years but considering the time she has been in jail, she will only serve five years in total”, a judiciary spokesman said.
“We condemn this decision by the Iranian authorities, who persist in detaining Fariba Adelkhah despite the absence of serious evidence or fact, with an exclusively political objective” the French foreign ministry said. Earlier, France’s foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said the country would take a tougher stance with Iran after Tehran sentenced Adelkhah.
Adelkhah, a specialist in Shia Islam and a research director at Sciences Po University in Paris, was arrested in June last year. Her trial started on March 3 at Tehran’s Revolutionary Court.
Her French colleague Roland Marchal, who was detained along with her, was released in March in a prisoner swap, after France released Iranian engineer Jallal Rohollahnejad, who faced extradition to the United States over accusations he violated US sanctions against Iran.
