He comes out of silence, almost a year after his release from an Iranian prison. Benjamin Brière returned to France on May 12, 2023, after more than three years of detention in Iran. The French tourist was traveling alone in his van at the time of his arrest in May 2020. Iran then accused him of taking “photographs of prohibited areas” with a recreational drone in a natural park, and sentenced him to eight years in prison for espionage.
A year later, Benjamin Brière spoke at length about his mental health to the magazine “Envoyéspecial” broadcast on France 2 this Thursday. “I can't sleep in the dark. I have to sleep with the light. I need a night light, like a child,” he says sadly. “You freak out at any noise, you’re still scared, you look behind your shoulder,” he adds, his face marked.
His arrest occurred in the middle of the night, around 2 a.m. “Seven or eight soldiers” then woke him from his sleep by knocking on the window of his van. These were the Revolutionary Guards, the ideological army of Iranian power.
It describes a mock trial in which the judge actually has no power. “It’s a paper that we slip to him and that he reads, it’s grotesque. We expose you to things that you know are not true, they know that it is not true,” denounces the Frenchman.
Dilapidated and overcrowded dormitories
After his conviction, he was taken to Valikabad prison in Mashhad (north-east) where the only foreign prisoner rubbed shoulders with political opponents and criminals sentenced to death. A grueling daily life then begins, in dilapidated and overcrowded dormitories. “A prison within a prison,” he whispers. He remains locked up 21 hours a day, exposed to continuous light. Some weeks, his jailers confine him to a tiny cell.
During his detention, the Frenchman began two hunger strikes in 2021 and February 2023 before being released in May 2023. “It's the only weapon I have, that they (
the Iranian power
) cannot not control,” he explains.
VIDEO. Iran: French hostages Benjamin Brière and Bernard Phelan have been released
The thirty-year-old was acquitted on appeal by the Iranian courts on February 15, 2023 before being released in May. “Benjamin Brière has always vigorously denied the absurdity of the accusations against him, he is neither a spy nor a threat to Iranian internal security and never has been,” his lawyer Me Valent assured the Parisian.
Four French people still detained
Currently, four nationals including Jacques Paris, Cécile Kohler and Louis Arnaud, have been detained since 2022 in Iran and considered by the French government as “state hostages” due to arrests and convictions deemed “arbitrary”. Another Frenchman, named Olivier, whose identity has not been revealed, is also detained.
Relatives of these French people expressed their concern this Wednesday about “the threat of open conflict between Iran and Israel” and urged the State to intensify its diplomatic efforts with Tehran to obtain their release.
“Ten months ago, I was released with this feeling of almost total relief but tinged with guilt,” Benjamin Brière testified on March 23 during a rally in Paris. “The word hostage is and always will be the most appropriate. Cécile is hostage, Louis is hostage, Olivier is hostage, Jacques is hostage,” he stressed. “I was a hostage. No offense to the torturers, executioners and butchers of the Iranian regime. »