Cécile Kohler, a teacher, has been detained in Iran for 1,000 days now. A symbolic date during which his family asked Emmanuel Macron to intervene to obtain his release, during a rally in his city of Soultz, in the south of Alsace, this Friday.
“It has been 1,000 days since you were taken hostage. For what ? “Launched Cécile Kohler’s mother, Mireille Kohler, speaking to some 300 people gathered in front of the town hall of Soultz, a commune of 7,000 inhabitants near Mulhouse. Cécile Kohler, 40, was arrested on May 7, 2022, on the last day of a tourist trip to Iran, where the authorities accused him of espionage.
Cécile Kohler and Jacques Paris have been hostages from Iran for 1000 days.
842 days for Olivier Rumbleau.
I think of them and their families that I will receive soon.
Their detention is unworthy and arbitrary.
We demand their release.
– Emmanuel Macron (@emmanuelmacron) January 31, 2025
After this call, President Emmanuel Macron denounced, this Friday evening on X, an “unworthy and arbitrary detention”. “It has been 1,000 days since Cécile Kohler and Jacques Paris are hostages from Iran. 842 days for Olivier Rumbleau. We demand their release, “he insisted on the social network, while announcing that he wanted to” soon “receive the families of prisoners.
Macron “holds the key”
Addressing the French and Iranian presidents, Mireille Kohler had said: “Messrs Macron and Pezeshkian, please ask you to find an agreement and release our children Cécile, Jacques and Olivier”, three French currently detained by Tehran.
Jacques Paris, Cécile Kohler’s companion, was arrested at the same time as she, while Olivier Rondeau, detained for more than two years, came out of anonymity in early January. Another Frenchman, Louis Arnaud, a 36 -year -old consultant, had been arrested in September 2022 in Tehran, when the demonstrations of the Woman Liberty Movement began. He was released in June 2024.
“We would like to be received by Emmanuel Macron. One wonders why he has not yet received us, because we have been received by several ministers already, without problem, and he, it makes himself a little wait, “said Mireille Kohler to AFP. “I think it is he who has the key, who holds the key. »»
“We know she’s going very badly”
Mireille Kohler said he was able to speak to her daughter on Sunday for 13 minutes. “We know that she is bad, she tries not to show it, but we know that she is very bad,” she said, adding that Cécile Kohler “is more or less aware” of mobilization in his favor. “But it’s extremely hard as a test (…) as Cécile once told us: I know it’s hard for you, but you are not locked up “Said his mother, who wore a t-shirt representing her daughter’s face with the words” Freedom for Cécile “.
According to the Iranian and Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi, who was imprisoned in Evin prison, Cécile Kohler is “extremely weakened”. “Finding yourself three years like her, without being able to move, without being able to get some fresh air, it can be fatal to her,” said Narges Mohammadi during an exit permission in early January.
“We don’t know when this nightmare will end,” said Pascal Kohler, his father. This expectation punctuated by hope, for her daughter, “it is a torture that must be very difficult to bear”. “She told us that she despairs of being able to come back, that she wonders if she will be able to return one day,” said her father.
Among the people present in support, Alain Diot, his face serious, brandished a sign proclaiming “every day is one day too much. Freedom for Cécile “This 71 -year -old man says he” knew Cécile very little “, adding:” She is the age of my son “. “She is an intelligent girl, attentive to everyone around her, committed,” he said about this professor associated with modern letters and delegate of the Force Ouvrière union, who teaches in a high school Carrières-sur-Seine, in the Paris region.
Also mobilized, Yves Zinderstein, 66, said to hope “that these rallies bear fruit, that these incessant calls finally succeed in doing something so that Cécile can get out of this hell”.