Iran has released an Iranian- American academic who had been jailed for four month on the charge of harming national security, the state media reported Thursday.
According to the report, Kian Tajbakhsh, an urban planning consultant with the Soros Foundation's Open Society Institute, was freed on Wednesday night after he paid one billion rials (107,000 U.S. dollars) in bail.
However, Tajbakhsh can not leave Iran immediately unless he submits a written request to the judge for lifting the ban.
Before his release, Tajbakhsh has told the journalists who visited him at the Evin prison that he expected to be freed soon and a local judiciary spokesman had said it was possible.
Tajbakhsh's release came a month after the release of another famous Iranian-American academic, 67-year-old Esfandiari, head of the Middle East program at the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. She was arrested in last December when she was in Iran to visit her 93-year-old mother. Her passport was also said to be "stolen" at that time.
She was allowed to leave Iran early this month and flew to Austria.
On Tuesday, Parnaz Azima, another Iranian-American who was working for Farsi-language service Radio Farda, an affiliated station to the U.S.-funded Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty, was also allowed to leave Iran.
Earlier, she was banned by the authorities to leave the Islamic Republic since her passport was confiscated.
Iranian authorities have accused the Iranian-Americans of harming national security and trying to foment a "velvet revolution" against the current Iranian government.
The detaining issue of these academics have escalated the current tensions between Iran and the United States.
Source: Xinhua
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