Brussels – The European Union has issued a statement on the incident involving two diplomats from the French Embassy in Tehran on 19 July. “The EU condemns in the strongest possible terms the attack” suffered by the two officials and “expresses its solidarity with France,” calling on Iran to “prosecute those responsible for the attack and to fully respect its international commitments.” This was stated in a note by the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Kaja Kallas. According to Paris’s account, on 19 July, two French diplomats were stopped, questioned, and detained for several hours by Iranian security forces, in what the French government has described as a “serious violation of diplomatic immunity.”
Accounts of the incident, however, differ. An official from the Iranian Foreign Ministry, Mohammad Tanhaei, has denied that the two diplomats were mistreated, claiming that security personnel had simply questioned them after seeing them meet with individuals under investigation on security grounds. France rejects this version of events.
The spokesperson for the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Pascal Confavreux, stated that the two officials were meeting with an embassy supplier. According to Paris, during their detention their mobile phones were confiscated, they were prevented from contacting the diplomatic mission, and they were subjected to verbal intimidation. One of the two, the cultural attaché, was also reportedly the victim of physical violence.
Kallas reaffirmed her support for Paris, noting that “such acts constitute a blatant violation of the Vienna Conventions and undermine the proper conduct of diplomatic relations.”
This refers to the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, the international treaty governing diplomatic relations between States and defining the rights and duties of diplomatic missions and their staff. In particular, Article 29 stipulates that “the person of a diplomatic agent is inviolable”: a diplomat may not be arrested or detained, and the receiving State, in this case Iran, is obliged to take all necessary measures to protect the diplomat’s person, liberty, and dignity.
English version by the Translation Service of Withub
