With the lights kept on 24 hours a day, allowed outside for just 30 minutes a few times a week, a French couple held in Iran since May 2022 on Wednesday marked three years of incarceration in the Islamic republic, with no immediate prospect of an end to their ordeal.

Cecile Kohler and Jacques Paris, held on spying charges they vehemently deny, are jailed in extremely tough conditions and feeling increasingly hopeless, according to their families.

They are among a number of Europeans held by Iran in what France and other countries call a deliberate hostage-taking strategy to extract concessions from the West at a time of tension over the Islamic republic's nuclear programme.

Kohler, a 40-year-old literature teacher from eastern France and her partner Paris, in his 70s, were arrested on May 7, 2022, on the last day of a tourist trip to Iran. They are held in section 209 at Tehran's Evin Prison, seen as reserved for political prisoners.

They are the........

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