French Tourist Benjamin Briere, currently imprisoned in Vakilabad Prison, Mashhad City went on hunger strike to protest being deprived of his inalienable right as a prisoner to contact his family on Christmas night.
According to HRANA, the news agency of Human Rights Activists, Briere has been jailed in Vakilabad since May 2020 when he was arrested by security forces.
“What is the Revolutionary Court of Mashhad waiting for in order to proceed Benjamin Briere’s case after 570 days in detention?” his lawyer, Saeed Dehghan, asked on his personal page on social media.
Dehghan was informed about charges of spying and propaganda against the regime against his client. Two other charges of “spreading corruption on earth” and “alcohol drinking” had been already dismissed by the court.
Per Briere’s lawyer, actions such as taking aerial photos with a remote-controlled helicam and posing some questions like “why is the veil (Hijab) forced in Iran but not other Islamic countries” were invoked as examples for charges of “spying” and “propaganda against the regime” respectively during in the last court session held in February 2021.
“A report published by Figaro used the word “drone”, while he had just used a normal helicam. This mistranslation brought about some misunderstanding regarding the charges in the media. Additionally, this report wrongly called him a French-Iranian dual citizen, while he is a French citizen,” Dehghan told HRANA.