TEHRAN - US-Iranian academic Haleh Esfandiari has left Iran after her release on bail from three months in jail on security charges, her lawyers and officials said on Monday.
"Mrs Esfandiari left Iran for a foreign country late Sunday night," lawyer Abdolfatah Soltani told AFP, adding the authorities had returned the academic's Iranian passport in recent days.
Esfandiari, 67, was released on August 21 on three billion rials (320,000 dollars) bail from Tehran's Evin prison, where she had been detained since early May on accusations of links to a US drive to topple Iran's rulers.
Tehran's chief prosecutor for security crimes Hassan Hadad said there was no reason to prevent Esfandiari leaving the country but appeared to imply the case was still not over.
"The judge in charge of the case agreed with Haleh Esfandiari's request to remove the ban on leaving the country," the ISNA agency quoted him as saying.
"Any accused person who is free on bail can leave the country until the trial and there is no reason to ban them from leaving the country."
The academic, who heads the Middle East programme at the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, returned to Iran last year to visit her sick 93-year-old mother.
According to the Wilson Center, she was attacked on her way to the airport in December by masked men who took away her bags and passports.
She was not detained at the time but was frequently interrogated before she was jailed on May 8.
The Washington Post said that the academic had flown from Tehran to the Austrian capital Vienna, where she was met by her husband Shaul Bakhash.
"I'm elated that Haleh has been freed to come back home," Bakhash told the newspaper from Vienna before she arrived.
Two other US-Iranians, urban planner Kian Tajbakhsh and California-based businessman Ali Shakeri, have also been detained in Iran since May.
Tajbakhsh faces the same accusations as Esfandiari and judiciary sources said after her release that he could be bailed in the near future. However there has since been no further news on his case.
Another US-Iranian, Parnaz Azima, who works for Radio Free Europe's Prague-based Persian language arm Radio Farda, faces security-related charges and is banned from leaving Iran.
The arrests had increased tensions between Tehran and Washington at a time of growing concerns about the Iranian nuclear drive, which the United States claims is aimed at making an atomic weapon.
09/03/2007 13:40 GMT