Iran jails French national for 5 years: family

An Iranian court has ordered a five-year jail sentence against a French national tried on national security charges, his family announced on Wednesday.

Louis Arnaud, a banking consultant, was detained in Iran in September last year and has been held in Tehran's Evin prison.

Arnaud was handed the sentence by a Revolutionary Court on charges of making propaganda against and seeking to harm the security of the Islamic republic, the family said in a statement.

The family said Arnaud was innocent of all charges and denounced the verdict as "an attack on human rights and individual freedoms".

The statement described Arnaud as a "passionate traveller" who had long wanted to visit Iran.

"Unfortunately, his dream turned into a nightmare when he was unjustly targeted, imprisoned, and now convicted on baseless charges, stripping him of his freedom and rights."

It insisted he had "kept a distance from the social movements that were starting" while in Iran, in reference to the protest movement that erupted in September 2022.

"At no time did he act with political intentions or carelessness."

Arnaud has lodged an appeal against the verdict, the family added.

The verdict has so far not been reported by Iranian media or publicly confirmed by the Iranian judiciary.

Arnaud is one of at least a dozen foreign nationals held by Tehran in what activists and Western governments have described as a deliberate hostage-taking strategy aimed at extracting concessions from the West.

Several foreign prisoners have been released in recent months, including five Americans freed in a complex exchange for billions of dollars in Iranian funds that had been frozen in a South Korean account.

In May, Iran freed French prisoners Benjamin Briere and Bernard Phelan, the latter also an Irish national, after their health deteriorated during hunger strikes. French-Iranian academic Fariba Adelkhah finally returned to France in October after being held for four-and-a-half years.

But aside from Arnaud, three other French citizens are held by Iran: teacher Cecile Kohler and her partner Jacques Paris and a man identified only by his first name, Olivier.