France must do more to protect citizens detained in Iran, says former hostage

Last year, Bernard Phelan suffered a stroke. Doctors said it was a consequence of post-traumatic stress disorder. Its origin is clear; Mr Phelan, a French-Irish citizen, is one of a long list of foreigners to have been detained and imprisoned by the Iranian regime.

While working for an Iranian tour operator, he was arrested on October 3, 2022 in the north-eastern city of Mashhad during a wave of anti-government protests, allegedly for taking photographs of police officers and a mosque that had been burned. 

In February 2023 he was sentenced to six-and-a-half years in prison on charges of ‘providing information to an enemy country’.

“I was just the wrong person, in the wrong place at the wrong time," he said.

He had landed in Iran on September 17, 2022, the day after 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman Mahsa Amini died in suspicious circumstances in Tehran following her arrest for wearing her headscarf improperly. Her death triggered protests across Iran.

Mr Phelan was imprisoned for 221 days before being released on May 12, 2023.

The title of his subsequent book, You Will Die in Prison, is a reference to the sentencing judge’s comment to him following his refusal to sign documents.

Two further books have been published highlighting the imprisonment of French citizens Iran: Jamais sans Cécile, a collective volume by friends, colleagues, and supporters of Cécile Kohler, who was arrested in 2022; and Azadi by Benjamin Brière, a traveller and blogger who was arrested in 2020 after being accused of flying a drone near the border of Iran with Turkmenistan.

The Connexion spoke to Mr Phelan in December, three months after the publication of the paperback edition of his book.

“I found out later that I was arrested because my visa was on my French passport. Had it been on my Irish passport, nothing would have happened. Ireland has a fairly good relationship with Iran,” Mr Phelan said.

How are you feeling?

Fine. I have been undergoing treatment at a facility in Perpignan (Pyrénées-Orientales). I am taken there every morning for physiotherapy and rehabilitation, mainly because the right side of my upper body is not working. I also suffer from speech impairment.

Why did you write your book?

I wanted to tell everybody what it is like in an Iranian prison. The Iranian government treats imprisonment as a business. 

You are routinely kept hoping for release until they tell you otherwise. It goes on and on and on, until you finally break down.

Under the European system you are given a sentence for a certain amount of months or years and you eventually get out. In Iran, I never knew when I would get out. 

All foreign hostages eventually do leave at some point, but you never know when. Some of my cellmates had already been there for three years when I arrived.

You have talked about how often they asked you to sign documents, or to share your computer passwords. Was there a point where you felt you could have given up?

I gave my password because there was no point hiding it. They would have found it anyway at one stage. But I did not want to sign documents that I did not understand. That was a point of principle.

What do you remember most of your 221 days in prison?

My cellmates, mainly those from 17 to 25 years old. I also think of the kindness I received from several people in the prison, who looked after and cared for me.

You have hypertensive heart disease, chronic bone and eyesight issues and have been diagnosed with HIV, all requiring French medications. Did your health problems explain your relatively short stay?

Iranian officials do everything to keep foreign hostages physically safe because they know it would create diplomatic chaos if they didn’t. They practise what is called ‘white torture’.

I knew immediately that my health would be my best weapon, because the Iranians would not want blood on their hands. I did not take their medication at the very beginning, which worsened my situation. 

They kept saying that Iranian medication would work, but I kept refusing. It was a big factor in getting me out.

At one point you told your sister Caroline: “I’m going to do a Bobby Sands’ [member of the Provisional IRA who died on hunger strike in 1981 while imprisoned in Northern Ireland]. 

It is an Irish speciality [laughs]. It goes back a long time. It is the only weapon you have under such circumstances. The point was to get publicity and scare them, to move my case forward.

Benjamin Brière is advocating for a new ‘state hostage’ status – legal recognition of civilians unjustly detained by a foreign government for political leverage. Have you been campaigning for anything similar?

I travelled to Brussels and met with the European Union’s director of foreign affairs to work on something to better protect EU citizens. Today, you cannot get the same level of legal protection outside the European Union, which is part of the problem.

Mr Brière wrote: “Captivity is a traumatic experience. Liberation, another one.” What did he mean? 

He was trying to explain how difficult it is to integrate back into ordinary life once you are released, something I fully understand. 

I experienced it as well. After I was freed, I was well treated in a hospital in Paris. My first weekend outside was a nightmare. You experience the crowds, the light, the speed, things that contrast sharply with our experience in narrow and silent cells. Even today, it’s still hard for me. 

Secondly, you are faced with bureaucracy, which is another nightmare. You have to start from scratch with the administration. 

Benjamin advocated for the ‘one-stop shop’ – a single place where you would benefit from help with all aspects of life: your house, possessions, identity cards, social security, etc.

You have lived in France since 1986. Why did you choose the country?

My family used to holiday around Europe before my sister and I were born. As children, we also visited France. We just fell in love with the country – the food, the people, the scenery, the architecture.

Another reason for moving to France was that in the 1980s Ireland was still a very closed country. Getting out of it was extremely difficult, even though that is what most from my generation did. 

Many friends went to Canada, Australia, New Zealand, England. My brother went to Germany. We wanted to get out of this country, which had turned on itself.

What message do you want to spread?

I want the truth to be known: how we are treated both inside and outside prison.

And to give an insight into how the Iranian regime treats hostages, because it is a business, as I said. That is the way they work. We have to keep that in mind. But Iran is changing. Recently, they’ve started releasing hostages very quickly.

Would you ever go back to Iran?

I do not think my husband would allow it. I would when it is safe again, which it currently is not. There are lots of arrests and executions have hit record numbers. 

The mullahs are still in charge and it has been very difficult for people. I am hopeful there will be a good outcome for Iran, but it is really troubling.