“You are going crazy”: Cécile Kohler and Jacques Paris tell about “white torture”, the Iranian regime’s method to “break your spirit”

For 1,277 days they were held hostage in Iran. Cécile Kohler and Jacques Paris, a couple of French professors, were arrested in May 2022 as their tourist trip drew to a close, in a country that was not yet at war. Unceremoniously, they were immediately taken to the infamous Evin prison, north of Tehran, where political opponents, but also foreign nationals accused of espionage, were detained.

The sinister section 209 where they are incarcerated separately is the most sensitive area of ​​the prison: a building where the interrogation center is located, controlled by Iranian intelligence services. The rare exchanges authorized between them are monitored and recorded by their jailers.

The two teachers will live for several months in solitary confinement, deprived of any contact with the outside world, sleeping on the floor under a harsh light on 24 hours a day. Jacques Paris was placed for a time "in a very small cell, less than 4 square meters", without any ventilation. “It was constantly over 30 degrees and I lay flat on my stomach to breathe the thin stream of air under the door,” he says.

“Totally dehumanize the prisoner”

In addition to these detention conditions, psychological pressure and threats are constant. At each interrogation, Jacques Paris is told "For your family, you are already dead", or even "We are going to tear your nails out", "We are going to kill you", he testifies. Practices known as “white torture”, already described by survivors of Iranian jails. Its goal is to “totally dehumanize the smallest prisoner,” explains journalist Armin Arefi, “to make them believe that they are alone, that no one is mobilized for their release and that they are perhaps going to die, to put them in a state of psychological fragility which leaves no physical trace on their body, but which ruins them mentally.”

During filmed interrogations, sometimes for six hours a day, the two French hostages are harassed with questions, to the point of "putting them in a situation of uncertainty, aimed at making you doubt your own memory and the facts", explains Jacques Paris. After more than three weeks of this treatment, he continues, "they told me that all of this was worthless, that I was going to be sentenced to death if it continued like this, and that I would therefore have to start all over again." Hearing the truth is not what the jailers expect anyway: "No matter how much you talk about the facts, they will constantly tell you 'no, that's not true, no, you didn't say that, you didn't do that, you weren't in that place'. And so we go into our cell and we go crazy," continues Cécile Kohler.

"What they're interested in is breaking your spirit. And applying the 'Give me a man, I'll make him confess' method. They're trying to get you to admit that the only way out for you is to become part of their story."

Jacques Paris, held hostage for 1,277 days in Iran

in "Special Envoy"

The two Frenchmen must finally enter into the story of their torturers and are forced to make false confessions of espionage. Six months after their arrest, the first news of them arrived in the form of a pseudo-interview, broadcast on Iranian television at prime time. We hear Jacques Paris claiming to have "been recruited by the DGSE", as does Cécile Kohler, disclosing a code name, "Cécile Dirécley" and an objective: to work to overthrow the Iranian government...

“You are forced to deny yourself.”

These accusations obviously have no relation to reality. "Me, Jacques Paris testifies, I told them 'tell me what I have to say'. You can't imagine what we feel when we are forced to do that, when we have no choice!" Made from video surveillance images, the 30-minute video is then supposed to support accusations of espionage by the Iranian regime, weakened by the powerful “Women, Life, Freedom” movement which followed the death of Mahsa Amini, killed by the moral police for a poorly worn veil.

The arbitrary detention of the two French people will not end until November 2025. It illustrates the Iranian regime's method known as "hostage diplomacy", used to put pressure on the Western country where the citizen arrested and accused of espionage or threatening state security comes from.

Extract from “1,277 days in Iranian jails”, to be seen in “Special Envoy” on October 15, 2026.