Legal Questions Remain for Freed Scholar in Iran

The New York Times

Haleh Esfandiari, the Iranian-American scholar freed on bail after three months in prison, is waiting for Iranian judicial officials to inform her whether the travel ban against her will be lifted and a new passport issued to allow her to return to the United States, her husband and her lawyer said Wednesday.

In addition, a judge told the wife of Kian Tajbakhsh, who is also in jail in Iran and who like Ms. Esfandiari has dual nationality, that her husband would not be released from Evin Prison for at least another 10 to 15 days. “He promised me for the first time that my husband will be home for the last month of my pregnancy,” said Bahar Malek, Mr. Tajbakhsh’s wife, noting that she is nearly eight months pregnant.

A local news agency had quoted a source at the prosecutor’s office as saying that Mr. Tajbakhsh would be released on bail within a few days. Mr. Tajbakhsh, an urban planner with ties to the Open Society Institute, financed by George Soros, was also jailed in May.

Reached by telephone at her mother’s apartment here, Ms. Esfandiari, the director of the Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, said she was “fine and happy” but referred all questions to her husband.

Shirin Ebadi, the Nobel laureate, who is Ms. Esfandiari’s lawyer, said that under Iranian law she should be allowed to leave the country.

“She is released on bail now, and legally she can leave the country and return for her trial when the date is set,” Ms. Ebadi said in an interview. “If authorities want to act based on the law, they should give her her passport so that she can go home.”

To raise the $324,000 bail, Ms. Esfandiari’s family pledged the deed to her 93-year-old mother’s apartment as collateral. Ms. Esfandiari, 67, came to Iran last December to care for her mother, who was ailing.

In a similar case last year, the Iranian government allowed a Canadian-Iranian academic to leave about 40 days after his release from Evin Prison, but the deed to his home and his mother’s apartment are held as collateral for his bail.

Iranian experts interviewed in the United States said that imposing burdensome bails had become a means to dispense with politically difficult cases without letting the accused entirely off the hook.

In Washington, Shaul Bakhash, Ms. Esfandiari’s husband and a history professor at George Mason University, said he hoped the resolution of his wife’s case would come soon.

She was told before leaving the prison to await a phone call from the judiciary regarding the travel ban and her passport. “They told her that they would call her on both issues,” Mr. Bakhash said. The court does not recognize Ms. Ebadi as Ms. Esfandiari’s lawyer.

Although a documentary on state-run television and other government statements have leveled a variety of accusations at Ms. Esfandiari, including espionage and trying to foment a “velvet revolution” in Iran, it is unclear what formal charges — if any — she may face in court. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, pledged to resolve the issue in a rare letter responding to the Wilson Center’s director, Lee H. Hamilton.

Mr. Bakhash said that his wife had told him that she was treated well by both her interrogators and the women who served as her wardens in jail. In the days before her release she had been reading a Graham Greene novel in English that had been brought from her mother’s apartment. But she had developed a rash and an inflammation in her eyes that need to be treated. She had also lost considerable weight and had been troubled by arthritis.

Ms. Esfandiari was kept in solitary confinement throughout, he said, although she was allowed outdoors one to three hours each day and tried to be disciplined about doing stretching exercises in her cell and pacing outside.

“She sounded well, I think, tired,” Mr. Bakhash said. “But her voice was strong, and she was cheerful being out of jail and quite hopeful that she will be allowed to leave soon.”

The cases of at least four Iranian-Americans held in Iran — with others who hold dual nationality and Iranian intellectuals whose cases have not been publicized facing similar problems — have further strained ties between the United States and Iran. One of them, Parnaz Azima, 59, a reporter for the United States-financed Radio Farda, has been barred from leaving Iran although she posted bail last spring.

The fourth American, Ali Shakeri, with the Center for Citizen Peacebuilding at the University of California, Irvine, remains in Evin Prison. Last week, a senior judiciary spokesman described his case as separate from the others.

Nazila Fathi reported from Tehran, and Neil MacFarquhar from New York.