Topic: Clotilde Reiss

Clotilde Reiss (born July 31, 1985) is a French scholar, whose arrest in Iran on espionage charges on July 1, 2009 has generated considerable diplomatic controversy. She holds a master's degree from Sciences-Po Lille. At the time of her arrest she was teaching in Isfahan and writing a thesis about teaching history and geography in Iranian schools.

Reiss was arrested at Tehran airport on July 1, 2009 on her way home to France via Beirut. Iranian authorities alleged that Reiss took photographs of the 2009 Iranian election protests in Isfahan and emailed them to a friend, an act which constituted a Western plot against the Islamic Republic in the eyes of Iranian prosecutors. News of her arrest did not become public for several days, during which time the French government tried unsuccessfully to obtain her release.

When it became clear that Iran had every intention of putting Reiss on trial, officials at the highest level of the French government publicly mobilized on her behalf; French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner called the charges against her "absurd" and President Nicolas Sarkozy dismissed them as "pure fantasy". She was visited by the ambassador of France in Tehran, Bernard Poletti, on July 9 2009.