Radio Free Europe reporter released from Iran

Sep 18, 2007, 23:53 GMT

Washington - A Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty correspondent held in Iran for eight months was released and has left Iran, the radio organization reported Tuesday.

Parnaz Azima is the second of four high profile Iranian-Americans confined by Iran to be released. The US State Department has lodged continuing protests over their detention and confinement.

Azima, a dual national of Iran and the US, had been prevented from leaving the country since January, when her passport was confiscated while she was visiting her ill mother. She was allowed to collect her Iranian passport on September 4, but was still prevented from leaving until this week.

'For eight long months, Parnaz's colleagues at RFE/RL have been waiting for the day when she will be a free person again. We are happy Parnaz can finally be reunited with her family and see her newborn grandchild for the first time,' RFE/RL President Jeff Gedmin said.

But he noted his concern that the criminal charges against her had not been lifted. She was charged by Iran in May with acting against national security and spreading propaganda about Iran through her work for the Persian broadcasting service, Radio Farda, which is funded jointly by RFE/RL and Voice of America, two US government- funded stations.

Azima has rejected the charges. She has reported extensively on modern Iran for RFE/RL since the late 1990s.

Iranian-US national Haleh Esfandiari, who works for the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars, was jailed in May on alleged espionage charges and returned to the US earlier this month.

Last week, the Iranian judiciary said that Iranian-American scholar Kian Tajbakhsh would be released on bail 'within the next few days.' He is being held in Evin prison in Tehran, and bail was set at 1 billion rials (107,300 dollars).

Tajbakhsh, a sociologist and urban planning consultant with George Soros' Open Society Institute in the US, has been jailed for more than four months for having links to US think-tanks that Tehran accuses of trying to topple the Islamic system.

There have been no announcements on the fate of Ali Shakeri, the fourth Iranian-American being held and kept from leaving the country. Shakeri is a peace activist and board member at the University of California.

Azima has reported extensively on modern Iranian history, Persian literature, the status of women, ethnic and religious minorities in Iran and other topics.

The value of her mother's house helped back her 550,000-dollar bail.