Sylvie Arnaud’s first feeling when she learnt her son Louis had been detained in Iran in September last year was sheer incredulity, followed by a raging sense of injustice and impotence.
“We don’t know how long this will last, we don’t know what the Iranians are waiting for and we will probably never know,” she told AFP.
Louis Arnaud, described by his family as a passionate traveller who simply wanted to see the world, is one of four French nationals held in prison in Iran.
He is also among at least a dozen Western nationals jailed in what campaigners and some governments describe as a deliberate strategy of hostage-taking by the Islamic republic to extract concessions.
But Iran is far from the only country accused of pursuing such a strategy, with the likes of China, Russia and Venezuela seen as holding innocent foreigners on trumped-up charges of espionage or other…
