Nearly three years after his release from Iran, former hostage Benjamin Brière said his return to France marked the beginning of another ordeal.
The former detainee, who was imprisoned by Tehran for 1,079 days before being freed in 2023, said the French state offers little support to former hostages trying to rebuild their lives.
Sentenced in 2022 to eight years and eight months in prison on charges of espionage and propaganda against the Iranian regime, the Lyon native said his release was almost as traumatic as his arrest.
According to an interview of Brière with French media Le Journal du Net, former hostages are often left to deal alone with the administrative, financial and psychological consequences of their detention.
After returning to France, Brière said he discovered that he had been removed from several public systems, including the national health insurance system and France Travail, the country’s public employment agency.
He said he had to fight to have his rights restored, including with the tax authorities, despite the fact that he had been unable to deal with such matters from inside an Iranian prison.
‘Why I hadn’t filed taxes’
That experience, he said, quickly turned surreal. “They asked me why I hadn’t filed taxes for the past four years. I explained that I was in prison, that I couldn’t do it,” Brière said.
“The tax officer replied that even in prison, you still file your tax return… Except I was in an Iranian prison. Then I was told: ‘In that case, your family could have done it.'”
For Brière, the exchange revealed a deep lack of understanding of what former detainees have actually lived through.
During his first year in detention, he said he was unable to speak to his family at all. In the second year, he was allowed only 15 minutes on the phone every four to six weeks.
“So taxes were very far from being my priority,” he explained. Although he eventually figured out his situation, he said the episode was only the first in a series of bureaucratic battles.
Financially, he said he went through a period of severe hardship. With no immediate income to cover food, housing or psychological care, he had to rely on relatives for support.
He said therapy alone costs him more than €500 a month. Although Brière still had several months of unemployment benefits left, he said he had to wage a lengthy administrative fight to access them.
His case was only resolved after a member of parliament intervened directly with the Labour Ministry.
Beyond his own situation, Brière also points to the burden placed on families when a relative is held hostage abroad.
He described high legal costs, the need for some relatives to put their own lives on hold to defend the case in the media and with the French foreign ministry, as well as other expenses that families are sometimes left to cover themselves.
Working with the advocacy group SOS Otages, Brière has now called for the creation of a specific legal status for former French hostages.
He also asked for a temporary allowance to help cover basic living costs during the reintegration period, so former detainees do not have to rely solely on family support or standard social benefits.