French, Australian academics jailed in Iran on hunger strike

PARIS: A French-iranian researcher locked up in Tehran's notorious Evin Prison has gone on a hunger strike along with an academic and co-prisoner from Australia, a rights group said.

The hunger strikes by Iranian-born French researcher Fariba Adelkhah and Kylie Moore-gilbert were revealed by the Center for Human Rights in Iran. They were confirmed by Sciences Po's research centre CERI, where Adelkhah works. French researchers expressed their concern in tweets and press commentaries.

An open letter was sent to the Us-based Center for Human Rights in Iran signed with the names of the two women after it was received "by a source with contacts inside the prison", the centre said.

The centre quoted the letter as saying that the women were starting "their joint hunger strike in the name of academic freedom" on behalf of researchers like themselves "unjustly imprisoned on trumped up charges". The letter said they had been subjected to psychological torture and human rights violations. It said they are being held in Ward 2-A, allegedly run by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Iranian officials disclosed in July the arrest of Adelkhah, a prominent anthropologist who often travelled to Iran for her research on post-revolutionary Iranian society. They said she was arrested on espionage charges. Her friend and fellow researcher Roland Marchal was arrested as he tried to visit her, France revealed in October. He is being held in a men's ward.