PARIS: Two French nationals held in Iran are on their way back home, President Emmanuel Macron said Tuesday, following their release in November after more than three years in prison on espionage charges.
"Cecile Kohler and Jacques Paris are free and on their way to France, after three and a half years in detention in Iran," the French president wrote on X.
A source at the French foreign ministry, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the couple left Iran Tuesday at dawn in a diplomatic convoy with the French ambassador and "are currently in Azerbaijan".
Kohler, 41, and Paris, 72, were arrested in May 2022 at the end of a trip to Iran that their families say was purely touristic in nature.
They were freed from Tehran's Evin prison in November after more than three years in jail on espionage charges their families say were fabricated, but the pair had been waiting to leave the country.
Their fate had seemed even more uncertain after US-Israeli strikes on Iran in late February that killed the country’s Supreme Leader.
Both teachers – although Paris is retired – they were among a number of Europeans caught up in what activists and some Western governments including France describe as a deliberate strategy of hostage-taking by Iran to extract concessions from the West.
They left after US President Donald Trump on Monday warned that all of Iran could be "taken out" late Tuesday at the expiry of a deadline he issued for the Middle Eastern nation to reopen the vital Strait of Hormuz.
