French academic repatriated from Iran

French academic Clotilde Reiss returned to Paris Sunday, 10 months after she was arrested and accused of spying. France denied striking a secret deal with Tehran.

Reuters

A government jet brought the 24-year-old researcher to an airbase outside Paris after her lawyer paid Iran a fine of more than 230,000 euros to secure her release.

She was whisked to the office of President Nicolas Sarkozy, with whom she met for 20 minutes.  She then made a statement at the Elysée Palace, thanking the French president for defending her innocence, and paying tribute to her fellow prisoners in Iran, two of whom were put to death.

"They treated me like a sister," she said of her fellow detainees, paying "particular homage ... to the two men you saw on television beside me at my trial, who have been executed".

Reiss was detained on 1 July after attending protests in the Iranian city of Isfahan. She was charged with threatening Iranian national security, released on bail, and then required to reside at the French Embassy.  She appeared on a televised trial and spent six weeks in Tehran's Evin prison.

Her arrival brought an end to a long drama which raised tensions between France and Iran. 

The release came after a French court ruled against a US extradition request for an Iranian engineer and shortly before another judge was to rule on the parole request of a jailed Iranian assassin.

But French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner denied there had been any backroom deals. There was "no haggling and no pay off" to secure her release, he said. 

He also said there was no link between the French and Iranian cases.

Sarkozy thanked presidents Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil, Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal and Bashar al-Assad of Syria for their "active role" in the release, suggesting some backroom dealing must have taken place.