A detained Iranian-American academic accused of conspiring against the government has been released from a Tehran prison after a hefty bail was posted for her, a top judiciary official said yesterday.
Haleh Esfandiari, director of the Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, has been jailed at Tehran's Evin prison since early May on charges of acting against national security.
"She was released about 30 minutes ago after the bail of 3 billion rials [about US$333,000] was posted," said Mohammad Shadabi, an official at the Tehran prosecutor's office.
However, Esfandiari's whereabouts were not immediately known.
The Woodrow Wilson Center said it has been informed that Esfandiari was being released on bail and that her cousin in Tehran planned to pick her up, but the center did not have any official comment yet on the release.
Earlier yesterday, Esfandiari's husband, Shaul Bakhash, said that Esfandiari's mother in Tehran got a call from an Iranian judiciary official in the morning informing her of the decision to release Esfandiari. Fanny Esfandiari used the deed to her Tehran apartment to post bail, Bakhash said.
Esfandiari was expected to return to her mother's home, the husband said.
"I feel extremely good. It has been a very anxious several months. Now we hope she will not only be released from prison but allowed to come back home," Bakhash said from his home in Potomac, Maryland.
It was not immediately clear if Esfandiari would be allowed to leave the country.
"I can't say for now that she will be allowed to leave the country or not," Shadabi said.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
‘BODIES EVERYWHERE’: The incident occurred at a Filipino festival celebrating an anti-colonial leader, with the driver described as a ‘lone suspect’ known to police Canadian police arrested a man on Saturday after a car plowed into a street party in the western Canadian city of Vancouver, killing a number of people. Authorities said the incident happened shortly after 8pm in Vancouver’s Sunset on Fraser neighborhood as members of the Filipino community gathered to celebrate Lapu Lapu Day. The festival, which commemorates a Filipino anti-colonial leader from the 16th century, falls this year on the weekend before Canada’s election. A 30-year-old local man was arrested at the scene, Vancouver police wrote on X. The driver was a “lone suspect” known to police, a police spokesperson told journalists at the
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has unveiled a new naval destroyer, claiming it as a significant advancement toward his goal of expanding the operational range and preemptive strike capabilities of his nuclear-armed military, state media said yesterday. North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Kim attended the launching ceremony for the 5,000-tonne warship on Friday at the western port of Nampo. Kim framed the arms buildup as a response to perceived threats from the US and its allies in Asia, who have been expanding joint military exercises amid rising tensions over the North’s nuclear program. He added that the acquisition
RSS