A woman walks past posters with the portraits of Cecile Kohler and Jacques Paris, two French citizens held in Iran, on the day of support rallies to mark their three-year detention and to demand their release, in front of the National Assembly in Paris, France, May 7, 2025. The slogan reads “Freedom for Cecile Kohler and Jacques Paris.” Photo: REUTERS/Abdul Saboor

France condemned on Thursday the lengthy prison sentences given to two of its citizens for espionage, saying the charges were unfounded and the punishment arbitrary.

Cecile Kohler and her partner Jacques Paris have been detained since 2022, among dozens of foreign and dual nationals held by Iran in recent years, often on spy-related charges.

Rights groups and Western nations say they are being used as bargaining chips, which Iran denies.

“I would like to spare a special thought for our compatriots Cécile Kohler and Jacques Paris, who have been detained for more than three years in Iran,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Pascal Confavreux told reporters.

“Both were arbitrarily sentenced just the day before yesterday to very long prison terms. The charges against them, whatever they may be, are completely unfounded. We call for their immediate release.”

The semi-official Fars news agency said on Tuesday the two had been sentenced, despite Paris and Tehran indicating progress in talks to release them a week ago.

Without specifically naming Kohler or Paris, the court sentenced one French citizen to six years in prison for spying on behalf of France, five years for conspiracy to commit a crime against national security, and 20 years for assisting Israeli intelligence services, Fars reported.

The other was handed 10 years in prison for spying on behalf of France, five for conspiracy, and 17 for aiding Israel.

France has repeatedly protested about their case, saying Kohler and Paris were in conditions akin to torture in Tehran’s Evin prison and had been denied proper consular protection.

Iran has denied those accusations.

Tehran, in turn, has accused France of arbitrarily detaining Mahdieh Esfandiari, an Iranian student arrested this year over anti-Israel social media posts.

An 18-year-old French-German cyclist arrested this year, Lennart Monterlos, was released last week by Iran after a court acquitted him of espionage charges.

A view of destroyed buildings, amid a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, in Gaza City, Oct. 16, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Dawoud Abu Alkas

Israel said on Thursday it was preparing for the reopening of Gaza’s Rafah crossing with Egypt to let Palestinians in and out, but set no date as it traded blame with Hamas over violations of a US-mediated ceasefire.

A dispute over the return of Israeli hostages’ bodies held by Hamas threatens to derail the truce and other unresolved elements of the plan, including disarmament of terrorists and Gaza’s future governance.

Israeli government spokesperson Shosh Bedrosian told reporters Israel remained committed to the agreement and continued to uphold its obligations, demanding Hamas return the bodies of the 19 deceased hostages it had not handed over.

The Islamist faction has handed over 10 bodies, but Israel said one was not that of a hostage. The terrorist group says it has handed over all bodies it could recover.

The armed wing of Hamas said the handover of more bodies in Gaza, largely reduced to vast tracts of rubble by the war, would require the admission of heavy machinery and excavating equipment into the enclave.

On Thursday, a senior Hamas official accused Israel of flouting the ceasefire by killing at least 24 people in shootings since Friday, and said a list of such violations was handed over to mediators.

“The occupying state is working day and night to undermine the agreement through its violations on the ground,” he said.

The Israeli military did not immediately respond. It has previously said some Palestinians have ignored warnings not to approach Israeli ceasefire positions and troops “opened fire to remove the threat.”

Later on Thursday, local Hamas-run health authorities said an Israeli airstrike in Khan Younis in southern Gaza killed two people. The Israeli military said its forces fired at several individuals who emerged from a tunnel shaft and approached troops, describing them as posing an immediate threat.

Israel has said the next phase of the 20-point plan to end the war, a blueprint engineered by US President Donald Trump’s administration, calls for Hamas to relinquish its weapons and cede power, which it has so far refused to do.

Hamas has instead launched a security crackdown in urban areas vacated by Israeli forces, demonstrating its power through public executions and clashes with local armed clans.

Twenty remaining living hostages were freed on Monday in exchange for thousands of Palestinians jailed in Israel. Many of the Palestinian prisoners were serving lengthy sentences for terrorist activity.

The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry said on Thursday Israel had released 30 bodies of Palestinians killed during the conflict, taking the number of bodies it has received since Monday to 120.

Longer-term elements of Trump’s plan, including the make-up of an international “stabilization force” for the densely populated territory and moves towards creating a Palestinian state – rejected by Israel – have yet to be hashed out.

Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa said on Thursday the Western-backed Palestinian Authority (PA) would work with international institutions and partners to address Gaza’s security, logistical, financial, and governance challenges.

An upcoming conference in Egypt on Gaza’s reconstruction would need to clarify how donor funds are organized, who would receive them, and how they would be disbursed, he told reporters.

Hamas ejected the PA from Gaza in a brief and violent civil war in 2007.

In a statement on Thursday, Israel‘s military aid agency COGAT said coordination was under way with Egypt to set a date for reopening the Rafah crossing for movement of people after completing the necessary preparations.

COGAT said the Rafah crossing would not open for aid as this was not stipulated by the truce deal at any stage, rather all humanitarian goods bound for Gaza would pass through Israeli-controlled Kerem Shalom after undergoing security inspections.

Italian news agency ANSA quoted Israel‘s Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar as saying Rafah will probably be reopened on Sunday.

Aid trucks rolled into Gaza on Wednesday and Israel said 600 had been approved to go in under the truce pact. UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Tom Fletcher called that a “good base” but nowhere near enough, with medical care also scarce and most of the 2.2 million population homeless.

On Thursday UNICEF said that in recent days it brought in 250 pallets of supplies including family tents, winter clothes, tarpaulins, sanitary pads, and hygiene kits. It has also distributed more than 56,000 packs of baby food to help 12,500 children for two weeks, UNICEF spokesperson Tess Ingram said.

Ismail Al-Thawabta, head of the Hamas-run Gaza media office, said the aid that had entered since the fighting subsided was a “drop in the ocean.”

“The region urgently requires a large, continuous and organized inflow of aid, fuel, cooking gas, and relief and medical supplies,” he told Reuters.

The war was triggered by Hamas‘s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel in which some 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage back to Gaza.

Salwan Momika, an anti-Islam activist, in Malmo, Sweden, Sept. 3, 2023. Photo: TT News Agency/Johan Nilsson via REUTERS

A suspect has been identified in the murder of an anti-Islam campaigner in Sweden in January, the public prosecutor said on Monday, a case that the Swedish prime minister has said might have links to foreign powers.

“We have a good picture of the sequence of events and after extensive technical investigations and review of obtained surveillance footage,” the prosecutor said in a statement. “At present, the suspect‘s whereabouts are unknown.”

The statement did not name the suspect.

Court documents obtained by Reuters showed the suspect was a 24-year-old Syrian man who lived in Sweden at the time of the murder. It said Koran–burner Salwan Momika had been shot three times and the killing “had been preceded by careful planning.”

A detention hearing was set for Friday in a district court – a procedure under Swedish law prior to the issuance of an international wanted notice for the suspect.

Momika, an Iraqi refugee who frequently burned and desecrated copies of the Koran at public rallies, was shot dead in a town near Stockholm hours before the verdict in a trial where he stood accused of “offences of agitation against an ethnic or national group.”

Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said in January, referring to the killing, that “there is obviously a risk that there is a connection to a foreign power.”

The Koran burnings, seen by Muslims as a blasphemous act as they consider the Koran to be the literal word of God, drew widespread condemnation and complicated Sweden’s NATO accession process, which was eventually completed in 2024.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in 2023 that people who desecrate the Koran should face the “most severe punishment” and that Sweden had “gone into battle array for war on the Muslim world” by allegedly supporting those responsible.

Sweden in 2023 raised its terrorism alert to the second-highest level and warned of threats against Swedes at home and abroad after the Koran burnings. It was lowered back to three on a scale of five earlier this year.