TEHRAN, Iran –
An Iranian-American academic imprisoned for months before being released on bail in August was permitted to leave Iran and was reuniting with her family in Austria, her daughter said Monday.
Haleh Esfandiari picked up her passport and then left Iran on Sunday, said her daughter, Haleh Bakhash. She plans to stay in Austria, where her sister lives, for a week before returning to the United States, Bakhash said.
“She had some indication that she would get her passport back but she didn’t know when. It was a complete surprise to all of us, and a relief,” Bakhash told The Associated Press on the telephone from her home in Washington.
The Iranian Intelligence Ministry had accused Esfandiari, the head of the Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and her organization of trying to set up networks of Iranians with the ultimate goal of creating a “soft revolution” in Iran. Her husband and the Wilson Center deny the allegations.
The unexpected development followed comments by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who last week said that his government did not oppose Esfandiari’s departure, but that the issue had to be sorted out with the Iranian judiciary.
Authorities seized her passport in January.
Esfandiari, 67, was released on bail Aug. 21 from the Iranian capital’s notorious Evin prison where she was held since May. Her 93-year-old mother used the deed to her Tehran apartment to post bail.
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi, another lawyer for Esfandiari, said last month that there was no legal obstacle in the way of Esfandiari rejoining her family back in the United States, but she has to return to Iran to stand trial over charges of endangering national security.
Esfandiari was one of a handful of Iranian-Americans detained or facing security-related charges here, adding to tensions between the United States and Iran.
Washington accuses Iran of arming Shiite Muslim militants in Iraq and seeking to develop nuclear weapons. Tehran denies those claims, and blames the U.S. for Iraq’s instability.
Esfandiari was detained Dec. 30 after three masked men holding knives threatened to kill her on her way to Tehran’s airport to fly back to the U.S. from a visit to her mother, the Wilson Center has said.
For weeks, she was interrogated by authorities for up to eight hours a day about the activities of the Center’s Middle East Program, the Washington-based foundation said.
She was charged in May and for months, her only contact with her family were brief telephone calls to her mother in which she said she was under stress. Since her release on bail, Esfandiari is believed to have stayed at her mother’s home in Tehran.
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