France’s Macron calls on Iran to release jailed researcher

PARIS (AP) — French officials say President Emmanuel Macron has called for the “immediate release” of a French-Iranian researcher imprisoned in Iran. The French presidency said Sunday that Macron made the plea in a “long” phone call on Saturday with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi. The 62-year-old anthropologist Fariba Adelkhah has been detained in Iran since June 2019. She had been under house arrest since October 2020. But she was sent back to prison earlier this month. Macron also expressed his “concerns” over the situation of another French national detained in Iran who is on a hunger strike to protest his treatment. France and other world powers are in negotiations with Iran in Vienna to revive a 2015 nuclear deal.