US-Iranian academic freed after making TV 'confession'

[babsbunny]

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/article2883846.ece

By Anne Penketh, Diplomatic Editor
Published: 22 August 2007
An American-Iranian academic, whose imprisonment in Tehran's notorious Evin jail along with a colleague raised tensions with the Bush administration, has been abruptly freed.

Haleh Esfandiari, from the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson centre, was released yesterday after payment of 3bn rials in bail. She and Kian Tajbakhsh, a consultant for George Soros's Open Society Institute, were arrested in May on spying charges. They went on television last month to "confess" they were plotting a velvet revolution to topple Iran's clerical regime.

But US officials accused Iranian authorities of coercing the prisoners into making confessions as part of a campaign aimed at deterring Iranians from having contact with foreigners.