Le Figaro - France | Monday, August 17, 2009
French student's trial was clumsy manipulation
On Sunday the French student Clotilde Reiss, who was arrested in Tehran at the beginning of July, was released from custody. In his geopolitics blog for the right-wing conservative paper Le Figaro Pierre Rousselin criticises the trial of Reiss: "The release on bail of Clotilde Reiss confirms that the trial staged to discredit the protest movement in Iran was a clumsy, unsuccessful act of manipulation. The young French student fitted the profile required by the public prosecutors of a regime under extreme pressure which so much wanted to be the victim of a foreign plot. But it was impossible to make the charges against her stand up. The parody of justice, punctuated by the Stalinist-style 'confessions' by dozens of co-defendants, which were repetitive and agreed in advance, was intended for internal consumption. ... The masquerade had to end."
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