PARIS — Iran released a 19-year-old French-German dual citizen days after throwing out spying charges against him, the French foreign minister told AFP on Wednesday.
“Lennart Monterlos is free,” said Jean-Noel Barrot, with sources close to the case saying the young man would travel to France on Thursday.
“We are relieved that our son will return to us,” Monterlos’s parents said in a written statement to AFP through their lawyer, Chirinne Ardakani.
Monterlos was arrested on June 16 in the southern city of Bandar Abbas, on the third day of the brief war between Iran and Israel. The sports and travel enthusiast had been cycling alone across Iran on a Europe-to-Asia bike trip.
The Iranian judiciary announced the espionage accusations would be dropped on Monday.
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Monterlos had been released from prison over the weekend and was hosted by the French embassy in Tehran while awaiting the paperwork to allow him to leave the Islamic Republic, several sources close to the case told AFP.
Lennart Monterlos, then 18, speaks in a video he uploaded to Instagram from Iran, later shared by users on X. (Screen capture via X, used in accordance with Clause 27a of the Copyright Law)
The teenager, who has a German mother and a French father and grew up in eastern France, was arrested as he was preparing to cross the border into Afghanistan, his Iranian visa near expiration.
France, which has multiple other nationals imprisoned in the Islamic Republic, had condemned Monterlos’s detention as arbitrary.
French couple Cecile Kohler and Jacques Paris, accused of spying for Israel, have been in detention in Iran for nearly three and a half years and face the death penalty.
“I have not forgotten Cecile Kohler and Jacques Paris, whose immediate release we demand,” Barrot said.
Along with other European countries, France suspects Iran of taking Western citizens hostage to trade their freedom for concessions, notably on its nuclear plans and the lifting of economic sanctions. Iran is believed to hold about 20 Europeans in detention.
A supporter holds a placard bearing a portrait of French teacher Cecile Kohler, detained along with her partner Jacques Paris (right) in Iran, during a rally in their support in Paris, France, on May 14, 2023. (Thomas SAMSON/AFP)
Kohler and Paris, who were on the last day of a tourist trip in May 2022, are slated to be part of a potential prisoner swap for an Iranian woman held in France.
Mahdieh Esfandiari was arrested in France in February on charges of promoting terrorism on social media, according to French authorities.
Iran has repeatedly called her detention arbitrary but maintains that the French couple were spying on behalf of Israel. There have since been positive signals from France and Iran for a swap, with Iranian top diplomat Abbas Araghchi saying last month a deal was nearing its final stages.
Barrot said in a media interview on Monday that there were “strong prospects of being able to bring them back in the coming weeks.”
In March, Frenchman Olivier Grondeau, who had been detained in Iran since October 2022, was released.
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