A German businessman once held on death row in Iran for illicit sex with a Muslim woman left prison in Tehran yesterday after being released on bail pending a new trial, security officials said.
The officials told journalists assembled outside the high-security Evin prison late in the day that Mr Helmut Hofer was in an ambulance which had left the complex, followed by a German embassy vehicle.
They gave no further details and German embassy staff at the scene refused to comment.
Iran's official news agency, IRNA, said earlier that a court had freed Mr Hofer on bail of 100 million rials (about £20,000) pending his trial, scheduled for January 20th, on new charges. Mr Hofer (58) faces a charge of assaulting a prison guard.
Judicial sources have said he also faces allegations of "suspicious" contacts with foreigners, possibly linked to police charges that he was contemplating fleeing the country while under house arrest earlier this year.
A German diplomat went to the court earlier yesterday to post bail for Mr Hofer, who has been in and out of Iranian jails for the past two years. His lawyer has said that the businessman would be banned from leaving Iran while awaiting his new trial.
Mr Hofer was detained in late 1997 on charges of illicit sex with a 27-year-old unmarried Iranian medical student.
He was later sentenced to death, the penalty under Iran's Islamic laws for a non-Muslim man who has sexual relations with a Muslim woman out of wedlock. The woman was sentenced to 99 lashes.
The Supreme Court overturned the verdict and in a second trial Mr Hofer was found guilty of a lesser sex charge, after he said he had converted to Islam years earlier. The court ordered him to pay a fine in lieu of 99 lashes.
The case has strained once-close commercial and political ties between Iran and Germany, although relations have improved recently. German political figures and newspapers have accused Iran of prolonging Mr Hofer's detention in an attempt to win the release of two Iranians held in Germany, whom German officials believe are Iranian agents. Tehran has denied the accusations.