Tehran - The Iranian judiciary on Tuesday confirmed that
Iranian-US scholar Kian Tajbakhsh will 'within the next few days' be
released on bail, spokesman Alireza Jamshidi told reporters in the
Evin prison in Tehran where he is being held.
Judiciary deputy Ghazi Hadad told ISNA news agency that the amount
of the bail has been set at 1 billion rials (107,300 dollars) adding
that Tajbakhsh would be released whenever the amount was paid.
Local and foreign reporters were allowed Tuesday to visit
Tajbakhsh in the Evin prison.
Tajbakhsh, a sociologist and urban planning consultant with George
Soros' Open Society Institute, has been jailed for more than four
months for having links to US think-tanks which Tehran accuses of
trying to topple the Islamic system.
Tajbakhsh told the visiting reporters that conditions in the
prison were satisfactory and that he had access to television and
books in his solitary cell. He added that he also had daily phone
contacts and weekly visits with his pregnant wife.
'I am held in a suite but just have no pool,' ISNA news agency
quoted him as saying. Referring to reports that he would also be
released on bail like fellow Iranian-US nationals Haleh Esfandiari
and Parinaz Azimi, Tajbakhsh expressed hope for an early release but
could give no date.
Esfandiari, who works for the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson
International Centre for Scholars and was jailed in May on alleged
espionage charges, and Azimi, a correspondent for a Persian-language
radio station owned by US-funded Radio Free Europe, were both allowed
by Iran's judiciary to return home after their release earlier this
month.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur 
USA
Your Talkback on this Story