The release is part of a prisoner swap, Iranian state media says: The four dual-national prisoners will be exchanged with seven Iranians now imprisoned in the U.S, according to IRNA.
Advertisement
When Rezaian, a 39-year-old dual Iranian and USA citizen born and raised in California, was seized in his home with his Iranian wife, Yeganeh Salehi, on July 22, 2014, Iran had recently extended an interim agreement on its nuclear program with the United States. As of Saturday, little is known about who the Iranian prisoners are.
“As of our latest information, the plane has not departed Iran”, the official said.
Naghmeh met with President Obama in January of a year ago when he visited Boise.
“I couldn’t imagine being ripped away from my family like that, I can’t imagine for the children, having their father ripped away for them”.
Matt Duss of the Foundation for Middle East Peace tweeted the prisoner exchange was a big achievement for Iran-U.S. diplomacy.
He is in Vienna for talks with US Secretary of State John Kerry over Iran’s nuclear deal.
The lifting of the sanctions was announced by European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini and Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif. He was held in the notorious Evin prison before finally being found guilty on charges that his lawyer said included espionage. The sentence was eventually overturned, but he remained in prison.
Two other Americans, former Federal Bureau of Investigation agent Robert Levinson and oil executive Siamak Namazi, remain in captivity by Tehran.
If the International Atomic Energy Agency certifies that Iran is in compliance, some international economic sanctions against Iran are expected to be lifted.
News of the exchange came as world leaders converged here Saturday in anticipation of the end of worldwide sanctions against Iran in exchange for significantly curtailing its nuclear program.
The release of the prisoners and the nuclear deal developments cap weeks of intense U.S.-Iran diplomacy that took several unexpected turns after an Iranian ballistic missile test in October and then the detention by Iran of 10 U.S. Navy sailors and their two boats in the Persian Gulf on Tuesday.
Be proactive – Use the “Flag as Inappropriate” link at the upper right corner of each comment to let us know of abusive posts.
There are conflicting reports about the identities of the four prisoners released by Iran.
Among Democrats, Hillary Clinton also embraced the developments while saying Iran should not be thanked because it should never have detained the Americans.
A fifth American detained in Iran, Matthew Trevithick, was released in a move unrelated to the swap, US officials said. It wasn’t until a forced confession, a tactic commonly used by Iranian intelligence, that it was confirmed for his family that Amir was imprisoned. “But once again, Bob Levinson has been left behind”, they said in a statement posted on a family website.
Iranian officials have met recently with some of the prisoners held in the United States to see if they would be willing to return to Iran if a swap was agreed, said a person familiar with the cases who asked not to be identified.
But Abedini’s return to the United States may be hard, in part because of the religious overlay of his imprisonment. “The Iranian government should begin taking steps immediately to improve its press freedom record by releasing all journalists imprisoned in relation to their work”.
The Washington Post welcomed Iran’s release of its reporter Jason Rezaian in a message from its publisher Frederick Ryan.
Abedini, an Iran native and convert to Christinanity, was arrested in 2012 and convicted the next year on charges of attempting to undermine the Iranian government.
Advertisement
According to a USA official, Iran has committed to continue cooperating with the United States to try and determine Levinson’s whereabouts.
