Solitary confinement, air strikes: French couple return from Iran 'unbroken' after four-year ordeal

The 1,460-day ordeal of teachers Cécile Kohler and Jacques Paris ended early on Wednesday as the French couple landed at Paris Charles de Gaulle airport on a commercial flight from Azerbaijan, four years and a day after their arrest in Tehran.  

Family members and foreign ministry officials welcomed the couple at the Paris hub, before President Emmanuel Macron greeted them with a warm embrace on the lawns of the Élysée Palace, expressing his “great joy” at their return. 

Kohler, 41, and Paris, 72, were the last of what France refers to as “state hostages” held by Iran – first as detainees in Tehran’s most infamous prison, then holed up in French diplomatic premises. 

“For us, this is a fresh start. We're not broken,” Paris said in brief remarks at the presidential palace, vowing to speak out about their ordeal. “We kept our hopes up right to the end,” added Kohler, saying they had been subjected to “daily horror” in Tehran’s Evin Prison. 

“This marks the end of a terrible ordeal,” Macron earlier told a defence cabinet meeting. He thanked Omani mediators for their help in securing a green light for their transfer from Iran on Tuesday – even as US President Donald doubled down on his threats to destroy Iran and a “whole civilisation”. 

The French president’s office said the two French nationals left Iran by road “without any special coordination with the US and Israeli forces” operating in the region, even as air strikes hit two bridges and a train station. 

It took them eight hours to drive across Iran, and a further four hours to cross the border with Azerbaijan, according to French daily Le Monde, which described “a nerve-wracking wait for embassy staff worried that the process might fall apart at the last minute”. 

'Psychological terror’ 

The French couple – both teachers, though Paris is retired – were arrested in Tehran on May 7, 2022, the last day of a trip to Iran that their families say was for tourism. France denounced their detention as “unjustified and unfounded”. 

Read moreFrance condemns Iran over 'arbitrary' jail terms for two detained nationals

Western nations regularly accuse Iran of using foreign prisoners as bargaining chips, an allegation Tehran rejects. 

Kohler and Paris were locked away in a section of Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison reserved for political prisoners, where they spent more than three years “in a state of constant psychological terror”, writes French daily Le Monde.  

“Subjected to solitary confinement in cramped cells, sleeping on the floor under the harsh glare of a neon light shining on their faces twenty-four hours a day, they endured relentless interrogations and repeated threats from their jailers,” the newspaper adds. 

For their loved ones, the anguish turned to horror in June last year when Israeli air strikes hit the prison, killing several inmates and leaving them without news of Kohler and Paris for several days. 

At the end of a closed-door trial, an Iranian court in October sentenced them to jail on espionage charges their families say were fabricated. The tribunal jailed Paris for 17 years and Kohler for 20 years for allegedly spying for France and Israel. 

Prisoner swap 

The first signs of hope for their release came in September last year, three months after the Evin Prison strike, when Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi evoked a possible “prisoner swap”, effectively tying the couple’s fate to that of an Iranian national held in France on charges of inciting terrorism. 

Although French authorities denied talk of a possible swap, analysts tied Tehran’s overture to a French decision days later to drop proceedings before the International Court of Justice against Iran for violating the right to consular protection of Kohler and Paris. 

Tehran has been pressing since last year for the release of Mahdieh Esfandiari, who was convicted by a French court in February over comments she made about the Hamas-led October 7 attacks on Israel. Esfandiari was sentenced to a year in jail and a further three years suspended, along with a permanent ban from French territory. 

The Iranian national, who is appealing her conviction, was released from jail and placed under house arrest last November – a gesture that helped pave the way for Kohler and Paris’s transfer days later from Evin Prison to the French embassy in Tehran on November 5, 2025, where they remained until France finally secured a green light for their return home.

Read more'Free and on ​their ‌way ⁠to France': Cécile Kohler and Jacques Paris released by Iran, says Macron

Macron's office has insisted that the two cases are separate, stressing that judicial proceedings in Esfandiari’s case are not over. But a lawyer for the Iranian national has confirmed that her house arrest was lifted just hours after news emerged that the French couple would leave Iran. 

'Preferential treatment’ 

French officials have thanked Oman for playing a mediation role in the release of Kohler and Paris. A French foreign ministry source told AFP that “what secured their release was the current situation”,adding that “if anything dramatic had happened to our compatriots, the reaction would have been fierce”.  

Analysts, however, point to a calculated move by Tehran aimed at exacerbating divisions between Washington and its European allies. 

“This release sends a message that Iran will give preferential treatment to the United States’ traditional allies who refuse to work with Trump during the war,” Iran expert Ross Harrison, a researcher at the Middle East Institute, told Le Monde. 

As it hailed the release of Kohler and Paris, the Élysée Palace pointed out that the French president “was the first Western head of state to speak with the Iranian president”, Massoud Pezeshkian, after the war began. 

Macron has distanced France from the conflict, saying his country was not consulted in advance about the US-Israeli attack that triggered the war, and questioning their legality. He has also voiced exasperation at US President Donald Trump’s increasingly erratic statements, recently telling reporters during a trip to South Korea: “When you want to be serious, you don't say the opposite every day of what you said the day before. And perhaps you shouldn't talk every day.” 

The next day, a French container ship received a rare green light to cross the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran closed off to all vessels linked to the US, Israel and their allies at the start of the war, paralysing traffic in the strategic waterway and sending global fuel prices soaring.

Read moreMacron says 'unrealistic' to open Hormuz Strait by force, urges Trump to 'be serious'