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Iran News: French Hostage Exposes Brutal Reality of Evin Prison

Louis Arnaud, a French banking consultant and former hostage in Iran, speaking to France 24 on January 16, 2025

Louis Arnaud, a French banking consultant and former hostage in Iran, has shared harrowing details about his two-year imprisonment in Tehran’s infamous Evin Prison. Speaking to France 24, Arnaud described his detention as a “never-ending nightmare” and detailed systemic abuse, highlighting the Iranian regime’s continued use of hostage diplomacy to exert pressure on the international community.

Arnaud was arrested in September 2022 during a leisure trip to Iran and sentenced to five years in prison on fabricated national security charges. He spent six months in solitary confinement in a cell he described as an 8-square-meter windowless space, constantly lit and monitored by surveillance cameras. “You don’t know if it’s day or night,” Arnaud said. “You live, eat, and sleep on the floor under constant watch. The guards scream at you, more like barking than shouting.”

The conditions were designed to break prisoners, according to Arnaud. “This is torture; let’s call it what it is. The goal is to destroy your identity and humanity so that during interrogations, you confess to whatever they decide. These confessions may be signed or recorded, as was the case for other French hostages like Jacques and Cécile.”

Arnaud described Evin Prison as a hub for human rights abuses, where both Iranian dissidents and foreign detainees endure physical and psychological torture. “I saw prisoners with broken ribs, hands, and legs, some with strangulation marks on their necks,” he revealed. “The sounds of cries and screams were constant. There is no easy day there. Every hour is a fight for survival that drains your strength.”

During his time in solitary confinement, Arnaud was allowed only three phone calls to his family and French officials, each closely monitored by prison authorities. Guards dictated what he could say, further exacerbating the psychological toll of his detention.

Arnaud is among at least seven French citizens taken hostage by the Iranian regime in recent years, three of whom remain imprisoned. His testimony sheds light on the regime’s broader strategy of using foreign nationals and dual citizens as bargaining chips for political and economic concessions from Western governments. Arnaud highlighted the case of Ahmadreza Djalali, a Swedish-Iranian academic sentenced to death, as another victim of this strategy.

“Thousands of Iranians are also imprisoned for opposing the regime, subjected to savage physical and psychological torture,” Arnaud said. “Many have been executed or are on death row.”

Arnaud criticized the lack of decisive international action to address Iran’s human rights violations. “For 45 years, this has been the reality in Iran, but it has intensified in recent years. European leaders must take stronger steps to stop this state-sponsored human trafficking and brutality.”

Arnaud’s firsthand account serves as a powerful reminder of the human cost of the Iranian regime’s policies. His call for global solidarity against Tehran’s actions resonates as a plea for justice not only for foreign hostages but also for the countless Iranians who continue to endure systemic abuse under the regime.

“This isn’t just my story,” Arnaud concluded. “It’s the story of thousands of others who are still suffering. The world must not remain silent.”