Kian Tajbakhsh will get to enjoy the Iranian New Year outside of prison with his family.
Tajbakhsh is a U.S.-Iranian scholar who was arrested in Iran during the aftermath of the summer presidential elections. He received his Ph.D. from Columbia and has been a faculty member at Columbia’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation since September 2009, but has been unable to assume his position because of his detainment.
According to the Associated Press, the semi-official ISNA news agency reported that Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dowlatabadi said that Tajbakhsh was released on Saturday for 15 days, the duration of the Iranian New Year, which begins on March 21 and ends on April 4.
Iran traditionally releases some prisoners during the New Year, the Press said.
He had to pay a bail of $800,000 and is not allowed to leave the country during this time.
His lawyer, Masoud Shafiei, said that Tajbakhsh is healthy and plans to stay with his family in Iran during the New Year.
Tajbakhsh was in Iran to work on a book when he was arrested last summer. He faces charges of spying and threatening national security. When he was arrested, he was sentenced to 15 years in Iranian prison. But last month, his sentence was reduced to five years by the Iranian Court of Appeals.
“The espionage charges leveled against Dr. Tajbakhsh are groundless,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wrote in a letter to Columbia faculty last month, in response to a letter asking for her help in obtaining Tajbakhsh’s release.
“The State Department is using every available diplomatic tool to achieve Dr. Tajbakhsh’s release. We continue to communicate our concern about his welfare and have asked other governments to urge the Iranian government to release him without further delay,” Clinton wrote.
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