Trial of Mahdieh Esfandiari: one year required against the Iranian, decision at the end of February

The Paris criminal court will deliver its judgment on February 26 in the trial for condoning terrorism of the Iranian Mahdieh Esfandiari, a possible bargaining chip with Tehran against the French Cécile Kohler and Jacques Paris, against whom the prosecution requested a year in prison.

At the end of four days of hearings, punctuated by several incidents, the court reserved its decision in this closely followed case.

The Iranian authorities have in fact expressed the wish to exchange, once the legal proceedings are closed, their national for the two French people, incarcerated in Iran in May 2022 before being sentenced respectively to 20 and 17 years in prison, in particular for espionage for the benefit of Israel, then released at the beginning of November 2025 with a ban on leaving the country.

“It’s an arrangement, a negotiation between our two states,” Iran’s ambassador to France, Mohammad Amin Nejad, declared Thursday evening on BFMTV. “My wish is for their return as soon as possible after the completion of arrangements between the two States. »

“The fact that people decide on my fate, without asking my opinion, that hurts me,” said the 39-year-old defendant in her last words before the trial closed. “To say that I came to interfere, I perceive it as an insult to me,” she also said, her voice trembling.

The prosecution against reincarcerating Mahdieh Esfandiari

In this case, judged in the midst of a wave of protests stifled in Iran by repression, Mahdieh Esfandiari appeared for advocating terrorism but also direct online provocation to an act of terrorism (offenses punishable by seven years of imprisonment and a fine of 100,000 euros), public insult online due to origin, ethnicity, nation, race or religion and criminal association. Four other men were on trial alongside him.

Against him, the prosecution requested four years in prison, three of which were suspended, and a definitive ban on him from French territory. The prosecutor considered that it was not necessary to reincarcerate her, given that she had already served eight months of pre-trial detention, until last October.

French justice accuses him of having contributed publications to the accounts of the Ax de la Résistance organization in 2023 and 2024, in particular on the Telegram,

In particular, the Telegram account of this organization praised the bloody attack carried out by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas on October 7, 2023 in Israel, inciting acts of terrorism and insulting the Jewish community, which led the Ministry of the Interior to file a report with the courts.

An arrest warrant required against Alain Soral

Against the four other defendants in this case, the public prosecutor requested up to three years in prison, the heaviest sentence being requested for Alain Soral, who is absent. A fine of 30,000 euros and an arrest warrant were also requested against the person who has 30 mentions in his criminal record.

At the helm, Mahdieh Esfandiari admitted to being at the origin of the Ax de la Résistance channel but denied being the author of the publications.