UPDATE: on 20 March 2020, on the eve of Nauroz, Roland Marchal was freed from prison, in exchange for the liberation of an Iranian engineer arrested in France for allegedly violating US sanctions on Iran. Although he has generally kept quiet since then, arriving in Coronavirus-confined France, he gave a moving interview to French public radio-TV on 8 April.

Fariba is still in prison (on 15 April) but apparently she’s feeling much better, not only physically but also for having been put in charge of the woman’s section of Evin Prison library, which she says ‘is not at all bad’.

Roland Marchal, probably the major French specialist on Somalia and the Horn of Africa, was taken hostage by Iran’s revolutionary guards, together with Fariba Adelkhah, another researcher belonging to the Centre de Recherches Internationales, to which I am also affiliated. Following is the text of the Fariba and Roland Support Committee, that we publish on the eve of the celebration of the Iranian revolution (11 Feb). We request the Iranian leader to free both researchers and all other prisoners in Iran who have been unjustly detained.

Freedom for Fariba Adelkhah and Roland Marchal, academic prisoners in Iran
 
Fariba Adelkhah and Roland Marchal, two researchers affiliated to the Centre for International Studies (CERI) in Paris, have been in an Iranian prison since June 5, 2019. Alongside other foreign academics, they have been accused of political crimes: undermining national security, propaganda against the regime and spying.

Iran’s justice system has itself acknowledged the arbitrary nature of the allegations. In December a court ordered their conditional release and in January espionage charges against Fariba Adelkhah were dropped. Yet it is not justice, but Iran’s Revolutionary Guards who determine their fate and harsh conditions of detention. 

On 24 December Fariba Adelkhah began a hunger strike. With Kylie Moore-Gilbert, an Australian-British academic incarcerated since 2018, she refused food in defence of legal rights and academic freedom throughout the Middle East.  Their pleas have successfully highlighted the plight of all academic prisoners. After six weeks of starvation, Fariba Adelkhah’s health is now in a critical condition.

Despite international publicity and outcry, the academics face acute danger. Fariba Adelkhah and Roland Marchal may soon be brought before Tehran’s Revolutionary Tribunal. There are strong reasons to believe that this trial will not be impartial.

The ‘shadow power’ of the Revolutionary Guards ultimately rests, constitutionally, on the Supreme Guide of the Revolution. This is why we formally address him, on this Tuesday 11^th of February, the day commemorating the 1979 revolution, to ask him to save the Islamic Republic from the shame of injustice by ordering the Revolutionary Guards to free Fariba Adelkhah and Roland Marchal and all others unjustly detained.

From the depths of Evin prison, Fariba Adelkhah poignantly has called upon us to “save researchers, in order to save research and preserve our history”. This appeal concerns not only the Islamic Republic and the whole Middle East, but academics throughout the world. For there will be no free and fair society without academic freedom.

For more information see Center for Human Rights in Iran: Who are the Dual and Foreign Nationals Imprisoned in Iran. An impression of how the conditions of detention may be for Roland Marchal and Fariba Adelkhah can be gained by reading the letters that Kylie Moore-Gilbert sent from the prison, published on the same website.

Portraits of Fariba Adelkhah and Roland Marchal