Iran rejects French call for release of dual national scholar

DUBAI – Iran said on Friday that France’s call for it to release a detained French-Iranian scholar was an interference in its internal affairs and would not help resolve the issue, the official news agency IRNA reported.

France’s Foreign Ministry on Thursday demanded Iran release dual national Fariba Adelkhah, a senior research fellow at Sciences Po university in Paris, who was detained on unspecified charges earlier this year.

“(Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas) Mousavi said the French Foreign Ministry’s interference in the case of an Iranian citizen was irrelevant…, and added: ‘This will not only fail to help resolve the issue, but rather make the legal process more complicated’,” IRNA reported.

Rights activists have accused Iran of arresting a number of dual nationals to try to win concessions from other countries – a charge that the Islamic republic has regularly dismissed.

Adelkhah’s arrest came at a time when France and other European powers were caught up in an international standoff over Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal, which the United States abandoned last year.

Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards have arrested dozens of dual nationals over recent years, mostly on espionage charges.