Iranian-French academic Fariba Adelkhah
Iran has released Iranian-French academic Fariba Adelkhah on furlough for five days, her lawyer Hojjat Kermani said on Tuesday.
According to Emtedad website, her lawyer has expressed hope that the furlough would be extended.
She is an anthropologist who studied in France, first at Université Strasbourg II and then at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences. In 1990, she finished her PhD thesis on women in Iran, titled "an anthropological approach of post-revolutionary Iran: the case of Islamic women."
Adelkhah was detained by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in the Spring of 2019 and was sentenced to more than six years in prison over vague charges such as collusion against the national security and propaganda against the state.
She was arrested along with Roland Marshall, another French researcher who was visiting Iran to meet with Adelkhah. The two had petitioned prison authorities to allow them to get married. Marshall was released from Evin prison on March 2020 in a prisoner swap with Jalal Ruhollah-Nejad, who was imprisoned in France over helping Iran import military technology in violation of US sanctions.
Foreign governments and human rights organizations have accused Iran of detaining foreigners and dual nationals on trumped up charges to use them for getting concessions from Western countries. Iran also holds citizens of several countries, including the US, France, Germany, Austria, and Sweden, on such charges as de facto hostages.