A French couple held by Iran for over three years who were this week handed lengthy jail sentences on charges of espionage are increasingly exhausted and their lives are at risk, their families warned Thursday.

Cecile Kohler, 41, and Jacques Paris, 72, were arrested in May 2022 and have been detained ever since. Their current location is unknown after they were moved from Tehran’s Evin prison in the wake of the Israeli strike on the facility in the June war.

They are among a number of Europeans still held by Iran in what several European governments, including France, describe as a deliberate strategy of hostage-taking by Tehran to extract concessions from the West.

“The French state is responsible, every day that goes by, for the survival of Cecile and Jacques,” Noemie Kohler, Cecile’s

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