The tourist from Lyon was arrested in May 2020 after flying a leisure drone in a desert area close to the border between Iran and Tajikistan.
Le Monde with AFP
The French Benjamin Brière, owned for more than a year and a half in Iran, was sentenced to eight years in prison for “espionage” by an Iranian revolutionary court, announced Tuesday, January 25 his lawyer by denouncing “a masquerade trial “.
Benjamin Brière was also sentenced to eight months in additional prison for “propaganda” against the Iranian regime, said his lawyer, M e Philippe Valent, in a statement transmitted to the agency France-Presse (AFP).
Native to Lyon, Benjamin Brière, today 36, was arrested in May 2020 for taking “photographs of prohibited zones” with a leisure drone in a natural park in Iran. He was detained in Valikabad Prison, Mashhad (Northeast) and is on hunger strike since the end of December to protest his conditions of detention. He had appeared last Thursday in a tribunal in Mashhad.
“Political hostage”
“Benjamin Briere obviously does not – neither – benefited from a fair form of trial before impartial judges. As a reminder, he has not received any right to defend themselves, of any access to the elements of the Prosecution, no possibility of preparing and presenting a defense before the judges of the Revolutionary Tribunal, “added M e worthy of the health of his client.
“The family of Benjamin Briere calls today to the French authorities so that the measures are taken immediately to allow his repatriation,” he added.
Blandine Brière, the sister of French, felt that his brother was a “political hostage”. “It is clear that it is a useful political trial for Iran, which sends a message to the French government,” she told AFP.
“We are not facing that, we feel like pawns in a diplomatic game,” she told, while Tehran and the great powers are engaged in extremely delicate negotiations to restart the 2015 Nuclear Agreement, supposed to prevent Tehran from acquiring atomic weapon, and torpedo by the former US President Donald Trump in 2018.