Evin prison, prison heart of Iranian repression, was targeted by Israel on Monday, June 23, 2025. The French Cécile Kohler And Jacques Paris are incarcerated in this vast complex penitentiary located north of Tehran. It is not known how many people are detained there. There are political prisoners, opponents of the regime or even foreign prisoners.
Released in June 2024, Louis Arnaud was imprisoned in Evin. The old French hostage rebuilds as it can. He regained weight, he found his family. The 35 -year -old man forgot nothing about his trip to Iran and that day in September 2022, when he was arrested, In the company of two European tourists, in a street in Tehran.
“We had done several activities that day. The last one was to go for an escape game. When we arrived in front of the door, the agents of the intelligence services awaited us,” recalls Louis Arnaud on the microphone of RTL. He tried to resist then he was handcuffed. He had printing “to be kidnapped.”
The Frenchman was transferred to Evin prison, one of the hardest in the country. It was in section 209, that rPolitical prisoners repressed by the regime. Each prisoner is cut off from the world.
Harassment, humiliations and threats
At the microphone of RTL, Louis Arnaud evokes his conditions of detention. “An eight cell, nine square meters”, without the slightest window and “blinding lights”, remembers the ex-hostage. He says he “was treated like an animal“. “You live, sleep, eat on the ground. All harassment, all humiliations, all threats that are inflicted“, tells the thirties.
In prison, you are treated as an animal
Louis Arnaud, former hostage in Iran
“The objective of all this torture is to make you admit what we decided to make you admit,” says Louis Arnaud, evoking “Extreme distress“. Louis Arnaud was retained with six other compatriots and dozens of Westerners.
Louis Arnaud assures that he did not participate in any demonstration against the regime, he maintains that he has never criticized the Iranian government. However, a revolutionary court ended up sentenced him to five years in prison to infringe state security.
Evin prison, in Tehran, where several French nationals were arbitrarily detained.
Credit: AFP
Cécile Kohler and Jacques Paris still detained in Iran
“From the moment I understood that I was a hostage, I understood that, even if I was going to the end of this sentence, we will find a new reason to condemn myself and give me five more years, if we have not found a good price to sell me. I had reached a form of detachment that was no matter what“, estimates the old hostage at the microphone of RTL.
“We cannot live in resistance permanently. We can live in anger or acceptance.
These are the only two forces to survive, “says Louis Arnaud. Sometimes he was authorized to call, under surveillance, his family in France. His relatives were mobilized for his release with the help of the Quai d’Orsay.
And then, the long -awaited news arrived on June 12, 2024. “We don’t believe it. You can’t believe it.
Everything is only cunning. It was necessary to say goodbye to a life, to a family, “said Louis Arnaud. The latter continues to fight so that Cécile Kohler and her companion Jacques Paris, the last two French hostages, come out of the Iranian jails.”I’m still there, I’m still with others“, he assures.
