AFP, Paris, July 7, 2009 – President Nicolas Sarkozy on Tuesday demanded the release of a French academic held for spying in Iran, dismissing the charges against her as ’pure fantasy’.
Clotilde Reiss, a lecturer at Isfahan university in central Iran, was arrested last Wednesday at Tehran airport on her way home to France via Beirut, according to French officials.
Speaking at the Elysee presidential palace, Sarkozy said Reiss should be released ’very, very soon’ and spoke disapprovingly of Iran’s ’methods’.
’Let me say in the clearest and simplest way possible: we demand the release of our compatriot,’ Sarkozy told a joint news conference with Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
’These accusations of espionage are pure fantasy and there is no reason for them.’
’No one can accept that French nationals are kidnapped and detained on the pretext of espionage. All of this is not a good sign,’ he added.
Iranian authorities have not confirmed that they are holding the woman.
French officials say Reiss is accused of taking part in OPPOSITION protests after last month’s disputed presidential vote and sending an email to a friend in Tehran that contained information on the rallies.
’I do not doubt for an instant that she will be released very, very soon,’ said Sarkozy.
Reiss had been in Iran for five months when she was arrested and taken to Tehran’s Evin prison, French officials said.
Foreign Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said the charges were related to pictures of the protests that she had taken with her mobile telephone and sent by private email to her Tehran friend.
’That’s not espionage, it cannot be. This accusation is absurd,’ said Kouchner on Monday.
’She was a classic young student who was doing her job, who witnessed protests like millions of Iranians,’ he said.
France alerted its European Union partners and said it was seeking an EU-wide response to Iran following the arrest of the academic and the detention of staff at the British embassy in Tehran.
All but one of the nine embassy staff detained in Tehran have now been freed.
Tensions between the West and Iran have been on the boil since the protests erupted over the June 12 contested re-election of President Mahmoud Ahamdinejad, triggering a crackdown by the regime and accusations of foreign meddling.
Iranian authorities rounded up leading reformists, political activists, journalists and hundreds of protestors as part of the crackdown launched to quell the worst unrest since the 1979 Islamic revolution.
Sarkozy has taken a hard line on Iran, saying the election was a ’fraud’ and questioning Ahamdinejad’s legitimacy.
At a summit with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown on Monday, Sarkozy expressed France’s ’total solidarity’ with Britain over the embassy staff detentions and the expulsion of diplomats.
’The Iranian people deserve better than the leaders they have currently,’ he said.
The situation in Iran was shaping up as one of the most contentious topics up for discussion at the Group of Eight summit opening Wednesday in Italy.