PARIS, France —Paris has filed a case against Tehran at the International Court of Justice over two French citizens who have been held in Iran for three years, the French foreign minister said on Friday.

The announcement comes as Iranian negotiators are set to meet with their counterparts from the United Kingdom, France, and Germany in Turkey on Friday for talks on Iran’s nuclear program.

Cecile Kohler, a 40-year-old literature teacher from eastern France and her partner, Jacques Paris, in his 70s, were arrested on May 7, 2022, on the last day of a tourist trip to Iran.

They have been held on spying charges, which they have vehemently denied.

In its complaint to the ICJ, France accused Iran “of violating its obligation to provide consular protection” to the pair, who “have been held hostage… detained in appalling conditions that amount to torture,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot told France 2 television.

Kohler and Paris are among a number of Europeans still held by Iran in what some European countries, including France, regard as a deliberate strategy of hostage-taking to extract concessions from the West at a time of tension over the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program.

Kohler and Paris are the last known French detainees in Iran after some recent releases and are regarded as “state hostages” by the French government.

The two are jailed in extremely tough conditions, according to their families.

In October 2022, Iran released footage of the pair supposedly confessing to the espionage charges, but France condemned the videos, saying it was staged.

Rights groups based outside Iran have repeatedly accused the Islamic Republic of extracting “confessions” from detained foreigners and Iranian campaigners under duress and then broadcasting them on state media as a propaganda tool.