French citizen Grondeau is freed after over 880 days in prison in Iran

A French citizen imprisoned in Iran for over 880 days has been freed and is back home, as was another French citizen held under house arrest in Tehran, French officials said on Thursday.

Their liberation came as France and the rest of Europe are trying to jumpstart talks with Iran over its rapidly advancing nuclear programme.

French President Emmanuel Macron announced online that Frenchman Olivier Grondeau had been freed.

The French Foreign Ministry said another French citizen who had been under house arrest in Tehran for more than four months was released on Wednesday night. He asked to not be publicly identified, the ministry said.

The release came ahead of Nowruz, the Persian New Year, when Iran has released prisoners in the past.

In January, Grondeau spoke to a French broadcaster from prison, alluding at the time to the politics at play in his imprisonment. "You become a human who has been stocked away indefinitely because one government is seeking to exert pressure on another,” he said.

His lawyer in France, Chirinne Ardakani, said he returned on Monday to Paris. "He’s in good hands. He’s recovering,” the attorney told The Associated Press.

An Iranian court had sentenced Grondeau, a backpacker and world traveller, to five years in prison on espionage charges that he, his family and the French government vigorously denied.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said France did not provide anything in exchange for Grondeau’s liberation. Barrot told French broadcaster TF1 on Thursday that he had initially discussed the situation with Iran’s foreign minister but when those discussions failed to secure a release, ″it was via different means that we obtained this result.″ He didn’t elaborate.

Associated Press