By Pishtaz | 2025-01-15

A Swiss tourist's mysterious January 9 death in an Iranian prison, ruled a suicide by Tehran but challenged by Swiss authorities, who were denied access to the 64-year-old during his internment, has sparked international concern.

The Iranian judiciary's Mizan Online said the Swiss national had been "arrested by security agencies for espionage." It did not name him and gave no details of his arrest or how he took his own life.

In a January 10 statement, the Swiss foreign ministry demanded a thorough investigation into the death and called for detailed information about the arrest, as well as the swift repatriation of his body.

The man had been traveling in Iran as a tourist, the ministry said.

The incident at Semnan prison shows that foreigners are still not safe from unjust incarceration in Iran.

Rights groups accuse Iran's regime of imprisoning foreigners and dual nationals on fabricated charges, using them as diplomatic leverage.

Among them, French tourist Olivier Grondeau, who revealed his full identity during a phone call from Tehran's Evin prison, where he has been held for over two years, France Inter radio network reported.

In an audio message aired January 13, the 34-year-old warned that he and two other French detainees held in Iran -- teacher Cecile Kohler and her partner Jacques Paris -- were "exhausted," AFP reported.

Grondeau was arrested in Shiraz in October 2022, and sentenced to five years in prison for "conspiracy against the Islamic Republic," his mother Therese Grondeau told France Inter.

His family rejects the charges, describing him as a fan of Persian poetry who was traveling to Iran on a tourist visa as part of a world tour.

Kohler and Paris were detained in May 2022. They are accused of seeking to stir up labor protests, accusations their families have vehemently denied.

'State hostages'

Grondeau, who reportedly shares a cell with 18 other prisoners, described his detention as "arbitrary and unbearable" and called it "political blackmail."

France summoned the Iranian ambassador to protest in the "strongest terms" the holding of Grondeau, Kohler and Paris, describing them "state hostages of the Islamic Republic of Iran," the foreign ministry said January 10.

It demanded their immediate release, describing their detention conditions as "intolerable" and potentially constituting torture under international law.

Rights groups describe the regime's practice of detaining foreigners as "hostage diplomacy."

Italian journalist Cecilia Sala was returned to Rome January 8 in a move observers believe was leverage to secure the release of an Iranian imprisoned in Italy on terrorism charges, international media reported.

Mohammad Abedininajafabadi (aka Mohammad Abedini) is accused of supplying drone navigation technology to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) used in a January 2024 deadly attack on a US military outpost in Jordan.