Iran jailed two French citizens on various charges including "espionage" on behalf of France and of Israel, Iran's state judicial news agency Mizan announced on Tuesday. 

Only two French nationals are known to be in Iranian detention, Cecile Kohler and Jacques Paris, who were first detained in May 2022. 

A teenage Franco-German cyclist, Lennart Monterlos, was released last week after a court acquitted him of espionage charges. 

What Mizan in Iran said about the sentences

Mizan and Iran's semi-official Fars news agency reported that the court convicted both suspects on three separate charges. 

One was sentenced to six years for spying on behalf of France, to five years for conspiracy to commit a crime against national security, and to 20 years for assisting Israeli intelligence services. 

The other was handed 10 years for spying for France, five years for conspiracy to commit a crime against national security, and to 17 years for assisting Israeli intelligence. 

Iranian jail sentences run concurrently, meaning each prisoner would serve the longest sentence if they all stand. The first-instance verdicts can be appealed at higher courts.

The report also said the pair were arrested in March 2023, though Kohler and Paris were first detained 10 months before that.

France considers lengthy detention arbitrary

France has lobbied for Kohler and Paris' release for several years, accusing Iran of holding them arbitrarily and without trial in conditions tantamount to torture in Tehran's notorious Evin Prison. It has also complained of them not being permitted proper consular access. Iran denies the accusations. 

Tehran is in turn seeking the release of an Iranian student living in Lyon in France, Mahdieh Esfandiari, who was arrested this year on charges of promoting terrorism linked to anti-Israel posts on social media.

Last month, Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi even intimated that a prisoner swap agreement was close.

Iran calls the charges against Esfandiari baseless, as France does Iran's allegations regarding Kohler and Paris.

The Reuters news agency quoted a spokesperson for the judiciary in Iran, Asghar Jahangir, as saying that France had refused to release Esfandiari on temporary bail and that Tehran was "striving for her unconditional release." 

Iran's Revolutionary Guards have detained dozens of foreign and dual nationals in recent years, often on espionage- and Israel-related charges. Rights groups and Western countries accuse Tehran of using detainees as political bargaining chips, which Iran denies. 

In news from a comparable case on Tuesday, a British woman's family said that she had been moved to the same Evin Prison as her husband after reports of protests and hunger strikes amid squalid conditions in the women's detention facility where she was being held. 

Lindsay and Craig Foreman, both 52, were detained in January as they passed through Kerman in central Iran on a round-the-world motorbike trip.

Their relatives expect to meet British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper later this week to discuss the matter.

Edited by: Roshni Majumdar