Iranian-American scholar leaves Iran
Updated: 2007-09-03 22:34
She was charged in May, and for months, her only contact with her family was brief telephone calls to her mother in which she said she was under stress. Since her release on bail, Esfandiari is believed to have stayed at her mother's home in Tehran.
"She called when she arrived in Vienna at the airport, and it was so good to hear her voice. She sounded very happy," her daughter said.
A phone message left by the AP with the Wilson Center was not immediately returned Monday.
Iran has charged three other Iranian-Americans with security-related offenses: Parnaz Azima, a journalist for US-funded Radio Farda; Kian Tajbakhsh, an urban planning consultant with the Soros Foundation's Open Society Institute; and Ali Shakeri, a founding board member of the Center for Citizen Peacebuilding at the University of California, Irvine.
Shakeri and Tajbakhsh are in prison; Azima is free but barred from leaving Iran. No other details about the circumstances of the three are known for now.
In July, Iran's state television broadcast a video in which Esfandiari said a network of foreign activists was trying to destabilize Iran and bring about "essential" social change. Tajbakhsh, who also featured in the video, said that his organization tried to create a "gap between the government and the nation."
The Wilson Center and the Open Society Institute criticized the Iranian government for the broadcast and dismissed the statements as "coerced."
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