Human Rights
Swiss national dies in Iranian prison as detention controversy grows
Tehran's treatment of foreign prisoners, many held on disputed charges, has again come into focus with Swiss detainee's alleged suicide.
![Fire damage at Tehran's Evin prison, October 16, 2022. [Koosha Mahshid Falahi/Mizan/AFP]](/gc3/images/2025/01/15/48774-iran-evin-fire-370_237.webp)
By Pishtaz |
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.
Death to Islamic Republic.
Europeans themselves act medieval wherever they deem it necessary.
Thank you for the programs you have provided.
Western countries do the same thing. Other countries aligned with the West do the same thing. Why Israel that commit so many terror attacks is mot condemned? It's even encouraged. Are human rights not violated in Saudi Arabia even worse than in other countries? Human rights are not respected at all in other Arab countries. Even in America itself, the rights of black people have been violated for years. All Western countries have nuclear weapons, but they say that other countries should not have them. So if we want to have an ideal society, laws must be enforced for everyone. If terror is bad, it must be bad for everyone, not just for Israel and America. Terror is good, but it is bad if others do it. If black people's rights are not respected in Western countries, it's okay, but it is bad if others do it. You can't even research the Holocaust in Western countries, let alone try to deny it. Did Roger Garaudy not go to prison for denying the Holocaust? So as long as human rights laws are not respected in Western countries and their allies, you shouldn't blame others. Everyone must first reform themselves.
We Iranians feel no comfort and security because of this cleric regime, let alone the foreigners who come to this world’s largest open-air prison on their own volition!
Hello.. Western countries have really caused a disaster for Iran that the consequences will remain for centuries. Now they are really playing a game with people and Iranians living abroad are added to this game and left the people living in Iran in the middle.. How is it that the President of Iran can travel to all countries and even get invited at times, but they put the IRGC in the terrorist group. Does the IRGC take orders from me????!!!!! Or from the government and the president?? So why is the president not a terrorist but those under him are???!!!!!!!! Every time I hear and see about this issue, I punch the wall with anger because of which I got injured in the hand area and my right hand doesn't work well.. Now I don't know why Iranians living abroad insist on the IRGC being a terrorist...!!!!!!!
It was good.