For years, Iran has employed “hostage diplomacy,” detaining innocent civilians under fabricated charges to extract concessions such as sanction relief or the release of Iranian nationals accused of terrorism in the West.
Days after Italian journalist Cecilia Sala was freed from a Tehran prison last week, Italy agreed to release an Iranian businessman wanted in the U.S. on charges of supplying advanced and lethal technology to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps for its attack drones. The intervention of incoming President Donald Trump in the secretive, multi-party deal has sparked hope that the fate of other Western hostages in Iran could soon improve.
One such case is that of 70-year-old German-Iranian human rights activist Nahid Taghavi, who was released from Iran’s notorious Evin Prison after four years of severe conditions. Upon her release, she immediately returned to Germany. The terms of her release remain unclear.
Meanwhile, Iran recently reported that a 64-year-old Swiss tourist arrested months ago on espionage charges had died by suicide in custody. The details of his case remain murky, but the sequence of recent events has prompted renewed pleas from Western detainees for their rescue.
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Another prisoner is Olivier Grondot, a 34-year-old Frenchman imprisoned in Iran since 2022. On Monday, Grondot revealed his identity in a recording smuggled from prison, where he described sharing a cell with 17 other inmates. “What I am doing now puts me at risk, but I am exhausted,” he said, calling his detention an act of “political extortion” by Iran aimed at France. He also detailed the deteriorating conditions faced by two other French prisoners, teachers Cécile Kohler, 39, and Jacques Paris, 71. “Their condition is worse than mine. They are utterly exhausted,” he said.
France had not previously disclosed Grondot’s identity, though he was convicted of espionage and sentenced to five years in prison. “Everyone knows I am innocent. They have no evidence against me,” Grondot said, urging French authorities to “recognize the truth” and act.
Separately, Ahmad Reza Djalali, a Swedish-Iranian academic held in Tehran since 2016 under a death sentence for alleged espionage for Israel, issued a new recording from prison on Monday. In it, the 53-year-old doctor accused Sweden of treating him as a “second-class citizen” and abandoning him. “The Swedish government is aware of my situation but does nothing. My execution or declining health doesn’t seem to concern them,” he said.
Djalali was arrested during a scientific conference in Tehran and kept in solitary confinement for months before being convicted of spying. Despite his appeals for intervention, Swedish authorities have been unable to secure his release.