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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| Lawyer says Iran clears French woman of spying |
| 2010-05-16 |
| TEHRAN - A French teacher arrested on spying charges after Iran's election in June last year will be allowed to leave the country after her jail sentence was commuted to a $285,000, her lawyer said on Saturday. “The case of Clotilde Reiss is finished ... I have paid a fine of $285,000 this morning. I will get her passport tomorrow and she will be allowed to leave immediately after,' Mohammad Ali Mahdavi-Sabet told Reuters. Reiss, who has been out of jail on bail and staying at the French embassy, was accused of taking part in a Western plot to destabilise the Iranian government after the June 12 vote in which President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was re-elected. Judiciary officials were not available for comment. The lawyer said earlier that Reiss had been sentenced to “two five-year parallel (jail) sentences for various charges'. “We have taken note of the legal decision regarding Clotilde Reiss and we await her return without delay,' French Foreign Ministry spokesman Bernard Valero said on Saturday. Reiss was arrested in Tehran in July when preparing to leave the Islamic state after working at the University of Isfahan for five months. She was among thousands of people detained over widespread post-vote unrest. Most have since been freed, though dozens, including former senior officials, have been sentenced to up to 16 years and two people were hanged in January. At least nine others are appealing death sentences. In the Reiss case, Ahmadinejad had called on France last September to consider a prisoner swap if Paris wanted to secure her release, without naming Iranian prisoners he wanted to see freed. France dismissed the suggestion as “blackmail'. |
| Posted by:Steve White |