Two French diplomats in Iran suffered “an extremely serious act of intimidation” by its security services, with one of them physically abused, France’s foreign minister says according to AFP.

Jean-Noel Barrot said in a statement sent to AFP that the two diplomats were targeted by the Iranian officials late on Sunday “in flagrant violation of diplomatic immunity”.

Both were “detained for several hours without reason, interrogated and one of them was physically abused” before they were able to return to the embassy, he said.