France flays travel ban on activist
Behbahani tells website of Iranian opposition she was barred from leaving Tehran
Paris: France condemned Iranian authorities for preventing a prominent female poet and activist in her 80s from travelling to Paris to attend an event marking International Women's Day on Monday.
Earlier, Simin Behbahani had told the website of Iranian opposition leader Mir Hussain Mousavi that she was barred from leaving Tehran's international airport. She said she had planned to read a poem and talk about feminism at an event organised by Paris city hall.
"France deplores the decision by Iranian authorities to prevent Simin Behbahani ... from leaving Iran when she should have travelled to France," Bernard Valero, the spokesman for the French foreign ministry, said in a statement.
"Her courage echoes that of numerous Iranians, who, despite the repression, lead a non-violent struggle to assert their fundamental rights," he added.
Behbahani, born in 1927, said she had just passed the gate in the airport and had got her passport stamped, when two security personnel called her back and took the passport.
"They kept me until 5 o'clock in the morning and asked me questions. Finally they gave me a paper and told me that I should go to the Revolutionary Court to get my passport back," Behbahani was quoted as saying.
