PARIS: Desperate relatives of two French detainees in Iran demanded “proof of life” on Friday after Israel struck their Tehran prison this week and a lawyer denounced their “forced disappearance”.

French national Cecile Kohler, a 40-year-old woman, and her 72-year-old partner Jacques Paris have been held in Iran since May 2022 on espionage charges.

Their fate has been unknown since Israel targeted Tehran’s Evin prison in an air strike on Monday, before a US-proposed ceasefire came into force.

Iran’s prison authority transferred inmates out of the prison after it was hit, but it is not clear how many inmates were moved or who they were.

“We don’t know if they are still alive, we don’t know where they are,” Noemie Kohler, Cecile’s daughter by a previous marriage, said at a press conference in Paris.

“We await proof of life immediately,” she added.

Anne-Laure Paris, Jacques’s daughter by a previous marriage, said she also had no idea where her father was.

“In view of the gravity of the situation, I am addressing you today, for the first time, because I’m scared for my father’s life,” she said at a press conference.

Chirinne Ardakani, a lawyer of the relatives, said: “Cecile and Jacques, state hostages arbitrarily detained in a cruel and inhuman manner in Iran, are missing. In law, this is a forced disappearance.”

Published in Dawn, June 28th, 2025