PARIS: A Frenchman held in Iran for more than 18 months on espionage charges he rejects has begun a hunger strike to protest at his detention conditions, his family said Monday.
Benjamin Briere, 36, was arrested in Iran last May, allegedly while flying a drone and taking photographs in a prohibited area.
“Benjamin started the hunger strike on December 25 because he was not allowed to call us for Christmas, but also to draw attention to the mistreatment he has suffered for twenty months,” his sister Blandine Briere told AFP.
“He sees no evolution in his case.”
His family describes him as an innocent tourist who set out in 2018 on a road trip in his camper van that began in Scandinavia before heading overland toward Iran.
His Iranian lawyer said in May that prosecutors had confirmed he would be tried for espionage as well as “propaganda against the system.” A conviction of espionage is punishable by death in Iran.
The French foreign ministry has described the spying charges against Briere, who is being held in the Valikabad prison in the city of Mashhad in northeastern Iran, as “incomprehensible.”
“The Iranian judiciary have not yet decided which court will try the case,” said Blandine Briere.
“He is being held hostage for no reason,” she added. “It is completely illegal and we don’t know anything. Benjamin needs more from the French foreign ministry.”
In Paris, a foreign ministry spokesman said Monday that the government was following “our compatriot’s situation with the greatest attention.”
The French embassy in Tehran had been in regular contact with Briere, who the spokesman said was in Iran “as a tourist” when he was arrested.
The latest such visit took place on December 21, and the embassy contacted him again on Monday, the ministry spokesman said.
Briere is one of more than a dozen Western nationals held in Iran whom activists describe as hostages innocent of any crime, and detained at the behest of the powerful Revolutionary Guards to extract concessions from the West.
Iran insists they are held in accordance with Iranian law, but Tehran has in the past shown readiness to release Western nationals in exchange for the freedom of Iranians held abroad.
Briere is the only such Western detainee known to be held in Iran who does not also hold an Iranian passport.
Iran is also holding the French-Iranian academic Fariba Adelkhah, who was detained in 2019 and sentenced in May 2020 to five years in prison on national security charges. In October, she was moved to house arrest.
Fellow French academic Roland Marchal, who was detained with her, was released in March 2020 after France released Iranian engineer Jallal Rohollahnejad, who faced extradition to the United States over accusations he violated US sanctions against Iran.
Frenchman held in Iran begins hunger strike
https://arab.news/mwrk6
Frenchman held in Iran begins hunger strike
- Started the “hunger strike on December 25 because he was not allowed to call us for Christmas”: Sister
- Lawyer said prosecutors had confirmed he would be tried for espionage as well as “propaganda against the system”
UN says one million Syrians may return in first half of 2025
GENEVA: The United Nations said Tuesday it expects around one million people to return to Syria in the first half of 2025, following the collapse of president Bashar Assad’s rule.
“We have forecasted that we hope to see somewhere in the order of one million Syrians returning between January and June of next year,” Rema Jamous Imseis, the Middle East and North Africa director for the UN refugee agency UNHCR, told a press briefing in Geneva.
EU chief holds talks on Syria with Turkiye’s Erdogan
The talks in the capital Ankara come after the EU Commission announced the launch of an “air bridge” operation to deliver an initial 50 tons of health supplies to Syria via Turkiye.
The items from EU stockpiles in Dubai will be flown to Adana in southern Turkiye for distribution in Syria, a commission statement said on Friday, indicating it would start “in the coming days.”
The UN’s OCHA humanitarian agency says more than a million people, mostly women and children, have been newly displaced since Assad was toppled by forces backed by Ankara.
Turkiye reopened its embassy in Damascus on Saturday and pledged to work with the new transitional government.
The country, which shares a long border with Syria, has become home to about three million Syrian refugees since the start of the civil war in 2011.
Their presence has sparked growing dissent in Turkiye, becoming a political headache which hurt Erdogan in last year’s presidential elections.
Under a 2016 deal with the EU, Turkiye agreed to take back Syrian refugees in exchange for financial aid and other incentives.
But Erdogan has often threatened Brussels with reopening the gates unless it provided additional support.
During a visit in 2021, Von der Leyen found herself left without a chair during talks with Erdogan in Ankara in what came to be known as the ‘sofagate scandal’.
As the first woman president of the EU Commission, she blamed sexism saying at the time: “It happened because I am a woman.”
Syria’s caretaker PM Bashir: Syria has very low foreign currency reserves
Current and former Syrian officials have told Reuters that the dollar reserves have been nearly depleted because Bashar Assad’s government increasingly used them to fund food, fuel and its war effort.
The central bank’s foreign exchange reserves amount to just around $200 million in cash, one of the sources told Reuters, while another said the US dollar reserves were “in the hundreds of millions.”
Palestinians in Syria flock to cemetery off-limits under Assad
YARMUK: In a war-ravaged Palestinian refugee camp in Syria, Radwan Adwan was stacking stones to rebuild his father’s grave, finally able to return to Yarmuk cemetery after Bashar Assad’s fall.
“Without the fall of the regime, it would have been impossible to see my father’s grave again,” said 45-year-old Adwan.
“When we arrived, there was no trace of the grave.”
It was his first visit there since 2018, when access to the cemetery south of Damascus was officially banned.
Assad’s fall on December 8, after a lightning offensive led by Islamist rebels, put an end to decades of iron-fisted rule and years of bloody civil war that began with repression of anti-government protests in 2011.
Yarmuk camp fell to rebels early in the war before becoming a jihadist stronghold. It was bombed and besieged by Assad’s forces, emptied of most of its residents and reduced to ruins before its recapture in 2018.
Assad’s ouster has allowed former residents to return for the first time in years.
Back at the cemetery, Adwan’s mother Zeina sat on a small metal chair in front of her husband’s gravesite.
She was “finally” able to weep for him, she said. “Before, my tears were dry.”
“It’s the first time that I have returned to his grave for years. Everything has changed, but I still recognize where his grave is,” said the 70-year-old woman.
Yarmuk camp, established in the 1950s to house Palestinians who fled or were expelled from their land after Israel’s creation, had become a key residential and commercial district over the decades.
Some 160,000 Palestinians lived there alongside thousands of Syrians before the country’s conflict erupted in 2011.
Thousands fled in 2012, and few have found their homes still standing in the eerie wasteland that used to be Yarmuk.
Along the road to the cemetery, barefoot children dressed in threadbare clothes play with what is left of a swing set in a rubble-strewn area that was once a park.
A steady stream of people headed to the cemetery, looking for their loved ones’ gravesites after years.
“Somewhere here is my father’s grave, my uncle’s, and another uncle’s,” said Mahmud Badwan, 60, gesturing to massive piles of grey rubble that bear little signs of what may lie beneath them.
Most tombstones are broken.
Near them lay breeze blocks from adjacent homes which stand empty and open to the elements.
“The Assad regime spared neither the living nor the dead. Look at how the ruins have covered the cemetery. They spared no one,” Badwan said.
There is speculation that the cemetery may also hold the remains of famed Israeli spy Eli Cohen and an Israeli solider.
Cohen was tried and hanged for espionage by the Syrians in 1965 after he infiltrated the top levels of the government.
A Palestinian source in Damascus, who spoke on condition of anonymity given the sensitivity of the subject, told AFP contacts were underway through mediators to try to find their remains.
Camp resident Amina Mounawar leaned against the wall of her ruined home, watching the flow of people arriving at the cemetery.
Some wandered the site, comparing locations to photos on their phones taken before the war in an attempt to locate graves in the transformed site.
“I have a lot of hope for the reconstruction of the camp, for a better future,” said Mounawar, 48, as she offered water to those arriving at the cemetery.
Western governments open talks with Syria’s new leaders
- Germany is coordinating closely with international partners, including France, the US, Britain, and Arab states, as Syria enters a new political phase
- United Nations humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher also expressed optimism after meeting with Syria’s new leaders
BERLIN: Germany, France, and other Western nations are engaging in talks with representatives of Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) in Damascus, following the Islamist group’s role in the recent overthrow of Syria’s Bashar Assad. Germany’s foreign ministry confirmed on Tuesday that its diplomats would meet HTS-appointed interim government officials, joining efforts by the United States and Britain to establish contact with Syria’s new leadership.
The German talks will focus on Syria’s transitional process and the protection of minorities, a foreign ministry spokesperson said. “The possibilities of establishing a diplomatic presence in Damascus are also being explored,” the spokesperson added, while underscoring that Germany continues to monitor HTS closely due to its origins in Al-Qaeda ideology.
“So far, they have acted prudently,” the spokesperson noted, referring to the group that led Assad’s ouster earlier this month, bringing an end to Syria’s 13-year civil war.
France has also moved to reestablish its presence in Syria. Visiting French special envoy for Syria, Jean-Francois Guillaume, said his country was committed to supporting Syrians during the transitional period.
“France is ready to stand with Syrians during this transition, which we hope will be peaceful,” Guillaume told journalists. He added that his delegation was in Damascus to “make contact with the de facto authorities.” An AFP journalist reported seeing the French flag raised at the embassy entrance for the first time since its closure in 2012.
The end of the conflict has reignited debate in Germany over asylum policies, particularly as the country took in nearly one million Syrian refugees during the war. For now, asylum procedures for Syrians are paused pending a reassessment of conditions in their homeland.
Germany is coordinating closely with international partners, including France, the US, Britain, and Arab states, as Syria enters a new political phase.
The Italian Prime Minister also welcomed the fall of the Assad regime, describing it as good news and expressing readiness to engage with Syria's new leadership. While acknowledging that initial signs from the new Syrian government are encouraging, the Prime Minister emphasized the need for caution moving forward.
United Nations humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher also expressed optimism after meeting with Syria’s new leaders in Damascus, including HTS leader Abu Mohammed Al-Golani, who now uses his real name, Ahmed Al-Sharaa.
“I’m encouraged,” Fletcher said on X, adding that there is “a basis for an ambitious scale-up of vital humanitarian support.” He described the current moment as a “cautious hope for Syria.”
