By Alain Dieckhoff, Director of CERI

This year again, and for the third year, we will mark the sad anniversary of the arrest of our colleague at CERI Fariba Adelkhah, director of research at Sciences Po. On 5 June 2019, Fariba was arrested in Iran, along with Roland Marchal, a CNRS researcher at CERI. Roland was finally released on 20 March 2020, after long diplomatic negotiations and almost nine and a half months of detention. Unfortunately, Fariba remains in detention against her will. Her fate was even further aggravated in 2022, as she was re-incarcerated in Evin Prison in January after having been under house arrest. This re-incarceration was decided under the pretence that she had failed to comply with the terms of her judicial supervision.

As the Support Committee has consistently pointed out, the reality is that Fariba Adelkhah’s five-year sentence, imprisonment, house arrest and arrest itself have never had any grounds whatsoever and constitute iniquitous and unlawful acts. For three years now, Fariba has been subjected to an appalling fate which the academic community at Sciences Po, but also elsewhere in France and abroad, will continue to oppose with tenacity.

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