Graphic source: The Wilson Center.
The AP reported today that a detained Iranian-American academic accused of conspiring against the Iranian government was freed on bail. Haleh Esfandiari, director of the Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, had been in a Tehran prison since early May.
Iranian authorities investigated Esfandiari and Kian Tajbakhsh, another detained Iranian-American, who was also accused of conspiring against the country's security.
Esfandiari was broadcast on Iranian televsion on a video which also featured Tajbakhsh, an urban planning consultant with the Soros Foundation's Open Society Institute. Some have found the broadcast to have been coerced.
Two other Iranian-Americans face security-related charges: Parnaz Azima, a journalist for U.S.-funded Radio Farda, and Ali Shakeri, a founding board member of the Center for Citizen Peacebuilding at the University of California, Irvine. Shakeri is in prison, while Azima is free but barred from leaving Iran.
No developments were announced in the case of the other three Iranian-Americans.
The Wilson Center is a nonpartisan institution established by Congress in 1968 and funded through private and public funds. Its Middle East program focuses on several areas, including "analysis of internal domestic and social developments in Iran; the aspiration of the younger generation for reform and expansion of individual liberties."
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