Iranian scientist freed from U.S. custody, arrives in Oman

TEHRAN,April 27(MNA) – An Iranian scientist held for more than a year in California on charges of violating U.S. sanctions arrived in Muscat on Friday, after being freed in what the Omani Foreign Ministry said was a humanitarian gesture, Reuters reported. Mojtaba Atarodi, an assistant professor of electrical engineering at Sharif University of Technology, had been detained for allegedly buying high-tech U.S. laboratory equipment, previous Iranian media reports said. Atarodi would return home on Saturday. Authorities in the Sultanate of Oman had worked with U.S. officials to speed up Atarodi’s case and return him home, the Omani Foreign Ministry said in a statement carried by local media. It said Oman would provide medical attention for Atarodi until his return to Iran, giving no further details. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said on Friday that the scientist had been freed thanks to follow-ups by the Foreign Ministry and thanked the friendly countries which helped secure Atarodi’s release. In a report on its website dated January 7, 2012, Iran’s Press TV said Atarodi was taken into custody on his arrival in Los Angeles on December 7, 2011, accused of buying advanced lab equipment. It said he had been reportedly held at a detention centre about 35 miles southeast of San Francisco. Oman, which enjoys good relations with both Iran and the United States, has previously helped obtain the release of Western prisoners held in the Islamic Republic. Ties between Tehran and Washington were severed shortly after Iran’s revolution of 1979. The Iranian Foreign Ministry issued a statement on September 22, 2011, saying that Shane Bauer and Joshua Fattal, the two U.S. citizens who were arrested in Iran in 2009, had been released in an act of Islamic clemency and in response to requests by a number of senior foreign officials, including Sultan Qaboos. U.S. citizens Sarah Shourd, Bauer, and Fattal were arrested by border guards on July 31, 2009 after illegally entering Iran’s territory from Iraq’s Kurdistan region. The three were charged with illegal entry and espionage. Shourd was released on a bail of $500,000 on September 14, 2010 in an act of Islamic clemency, while Bauer and Fattal were released on a bail of $500,000 each on September 21, 2010.