From RFE/RL:
Family and colleagues have welcomed the release on bail from an Iranian prison of Iranian-American Haleh Esfandiari and called for a quick return to her family in the United States. Esfandiari is the director of the Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington who has spent the past three months in jail. She was freed on Tuesday (August 21) on bail of 3 billion rials ($320,000).
Esfandiari appeared tired as she emerged from three months at Tehran's Evin prison. But she expressed joy when asked by Iranian state television in front of the prison gates how she felt:
"A sensation of happiness."
Esfandiari said she was treated well during her time in prison: "The women who worked in the prison were truly remarkable women, and very educated, and had wonderful manners, and we had great interaction. They were very kind and very patient. They embody the exact qualities that someone in such a position in a prison requires."
Her release came about a week after judiciary officials said investigations were completed into her case and the case of another detained Iranian-American -- scholar Kian Tajbakhsh.
It is still unclear whether Tajbakhsh -- who is a consultant with the Open Society Institute -- might be also released.
Both have been charged since their May detentions with security-related crimes.
On Tuesday (August 21), Iran's ISNA news agency quoted an unnamed judiciary official as saying vaguely that Tajbakhsh would be released on bail "in a few days."
There was no word on the fate of Ali Shakeri, a peace activist with dual Iranian-American citizenship who is also jailed in Iran. Authorities have also refused to allow a fourth Iranian-American, Radio Farda broadcaster Parnaz Azima, to leave Iran. They have charged Azima with working for Radio Farda and spreading propaganda against the Iranian state.
Azima told RFE/RL today that she's delighted at the release of Esfandiari: "I'm very happy that Haleh Esfandiari was freed from prison, although it was on heavy bail. But [it's great] that she is no longer in prison. On whether this will have an impact on my case, I can say that so far there have been no changes -- I have no news. I've been in Iran now for about eight months. The way [authorities] treat me is that they pay no attention to me -- meaning that they don't answer or do anything."
Some observers are convinced that these arrests -- along with an intensified crackdown on students, women's rights activists, and critics -- are part of an attempt by the Iranian government to create fear and intimidation and discourage contact between Iranian intellectuals and the outside world.
Snippets of interviews with Esfandiari and Tajbakhsh appeared in a television program in July that Iranian officials claimed proved that the two academics were involved in a U.S. plot to destabilize Iran's Islamic establishment.
Rights groups denounced that program and suggested the two had been forced to make the statements under duress.
Esfandiari's lawyer, Iranian Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi, told Radio Farda on Tuesday (August 21) that her case remains open. But Ebadi is optimistic that Esfandiari will be acquitted:
"Right now, from the judiciary's point of view, the case is open. But she will be out of prison until the day of the court hearing, and I'm sure that she will be acquitted because I'm completely [convinced] of her innocence. The three months she spent in solitary confinement was against the law."
Iranian officials have not said whether Esfandiari will be allowed to leave Iran. Her husband, Shaul Bakhash, a professor of history at George Mason University, has expressed hope that she will be allowed to rejoin her family in the United States.
It is unclear what led to Esfandiari's release or whether international pressure played a role in Iranian officials' decision to let her out on bail. A number of human rights groups and U.S. politicians have called on Iran to release the detained Iranian-Americans and allow them to leave the country. Former U.S. Congressman Lee Hamilton heads the Wilson Center, where Esfandiari works. He is quoted today by "The New York Times" as saying that Esfandiari's release came two weeks after Iran's supreme leader (Ayatollah Ali Khamenei) responded to a June 29 letter appealing for her freedom.
Hamilton said his letter did not refer to any tensions between Iran and the United States, and instead framed the request in humanitarian and religious terms.
The Wilson Center has said in an Internet statement that it hopes for "the safe and quick return of Kian Tajbakhsh, Parnaz Azima, and Ali Shakeri, who have also been unjustly detained in Iran."
From RFE/RL:
A journalist and opposition activist who was forcibly hospitalized in a Russian psychiatric clinic is claiming that she was beaten, drugged, and an attempt was made on her life during her internment.
Larisa Arap was released Monday (August 20) after being held 46 days against her will in a psychiatric clinic near the northern Russian city of Murmansk. She made the allegations during an interview with RFE/RL's Russian Service on the day of her release:
"When the police and the doctors brought me, I was very severely beaten by medical staff in the reception area. Then they bound me, after making me strip naked in front of male patients. There was an attempt to kill me. I was injected with a strong soporific, and I woke up because someone was pulling off me a woman who was suffocating me with a pillow. They put pills into my mouth, forced me to swallow them, and then checked my mouth."
The 48-year-old Arap, who is a member of an opposition group led by former chess champion Garry Kasparov, says her forced internment was retribution for an article in which she denounced abuse against young patients at another local mental institution.
She was released after a commission sent by Russia's human-rights ombudsman, Vladimir Lukin, concluded that her detention was unfounded. Arap's case has raised an international outcry. Reporters Without Borders joined Russian human-rights activists in comparing Arap's case to the Soviet practice of interning dissidents in psychiatric clinics.
A Murmansk court on Wednesday (August 22) is due to examine an appeal filed by Arap's family.
But the appeal may be hampered by a declaration that Arap claims clinic staffers forced her to sign: "I was forced to sign a declaration in which I agree that I am being treated voluntarily. I refused, after which I was asked to sign another declaration requesting to be released but pledge to get out-patient psychiatric treatment. There was no other solution than to write this declaration. They wouldn't have let me go otherwise."
August 17, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- Russia's modern literary history might soon open a new chapter -- an author facing libel charges for characterizations contained in a work of fiction. Moscow city prosecutors have already questioned Pavel Astakhov about his novel, "Raider," and are now deciding whether to open a criminal case. The head of the city police's main investigative directorate, Ivan Glukhov, initiated the investigation by asking prosecutors to open a criminal case against Astakhov and his publishing company.
According to Glukhov, the novel "contains numerous insulting and libelous deliberations" about the directorate, and defames the reputation of Russian police in general. In his letter to prosecutors, Glukhov acknowledges that the novel is "literary-fictional," but argues that, because the text refers to a police unit that actually exists, readers are being led to believe that events depicted in the story are true.
The author's lawyer, Mikhail Burmistrov, strongly disagrees. He tells RFE/RL's Russian Service that the issue of police corruption is nothing new -- and is even openly addressed by high-ranking officials in Russia. Therefore, Burmistrov says, his client's book is simply touching on a recognized problem: "He [Astakhov] is not saying anything new, just highlighting some problems more clearly. And, what's most important from a legal perspective, he does not mention a single concrete individual. This is really a work of fiction. And fictional work is that is created by author's imagination."
"Raider," which can be described as a crime thriller, follows a plot centered on mergers and acquisitions among companies. The protagonist, a businessman, bribes officers from the investigative directorate, who raid companies and open criminal cases to his benefit. But in the story, a young lawyer confronts the corruption.
The possibility that a criminal case could be opened against Astakhov has surprised many. The genre of crime thrillers is very popular in Russia, and the wrongdoings of law-enforcement agencies are often addressed in works of fiction.
Some analysts believe that there are deeper motives behind this case -- that it is intended to serve as a warning to authors by holding the threat of prosecution for what they write over their heads.
Sergei Lukyanenko, arguably the most popular science-fiction writer in Russia today, is among those who feel this way. The author of the hugely popular "Day Watch" and "Night Watch" series spoke to RFE/RL about his concerns: "Of course this worries me. Because it's easy to cross the line between observing the law, which is an essential part of any civilized country, and abusing the rights of ordinary citizens, abusing freedom of speech, and so on. This is a very difficult thing -- and in the struggle to protect these laws it would be easy to overstep the mark and start to limit a person's right to express himself freely."
To some commentators, the possible case against Astakhov also represents part of an ongoing crackdown on independence within the country's legal system.
Apart from being a writer, Astakhov is a successful lawyer. And at various times he has represented Russia's formerly independent television company, NTV -- now owned by state monopoly Gazprom; and Yukos, against which the government led a politically charged campaign.
Some believe that such activities of an independent lawyer may have angered the authorities.
Prosecutors are expected to decide within a week whether to move forward with charges against Astakhov.