TEHRAN — Iran summoned France’s ambassador to Tehran to protest the conduct of two French diplomats who were briefly detained earlier this month, the Iranian Foreign Ministry said Monday.Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said the ambassador was summoned Sunday and told that France must stop what Tehran described as interference in Iran’s internal affairs.“Yesterday, the French ambassador in Tehran was summoned to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where it was stressed that the French government must cease such actions and such interference in Iran’s internal affairs under misleading labels,” Baghaei said during a weekly news briefing.Baghaei accused the two diplomats of interfering in Iran’s domestic affairs “under the pretext of engaging with civil society.”He said their conduct could not be justified under the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said July 20 that Iranian officials had targeted the two diplomats the previous day.Barrot described the incident as “an extremely serious act of intimidation” by Iran’s security services.Barrot also said one of the diplomats was physically abused during the detention.Both were “detained for several hours without reason, interrogated, and one of them was physically abused” before they were able to return to the French embassy, he said.
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