Iranian Businessman Released From Prison

Three months after being accused of plotting against the government and one week after his case was called to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's attention by NPR's Steve Inskeep, Iranian businessman Bijan Khajehpour has been released from a prison in Tehran.

Steve heard the news via e-mails from Khajehpour's colleagues, and a spokesman for Ahmadinejad tells NPR's Davar Iran Ardalan that the president did indeed fulfill a promise to "follow through with the judicial system," and that Khajehpour has been set free.

As Steve wrote on Friday, one day after interviewing Ahmadinejad in New York, the Iranian president's efforts to explain his points of view "made me think of another man who tried to explain Iran" — Khajehpour — and to cite his case as one of many examples of people who have been imprisoned because they spoke out against the official results of the June president election.

Steve wrote that:

Khajehpour is an Iranian businessman whom I met in Tehran last January. ...

Like many Iranians, Khajehpour left his country and studied abroad after Iran's Islamic revolution. Unlike millions of Iranians who made new lives abroad, he chose to return to his country. He became a business consultant, working with foreign firms who wanted to do business in Iran. He also met journalists like me, and offered us a window into the Iranian point of view.

It was an optimistic view. "I see the Islamic Republic of Iran as a human being that was born in 1979," he said. "And it was very naughty as a child, made a lot of mistakes in its first decade of life. Today, it's 30 years old and settling down. It's getting married and, you know, finding a house."

That was before the election. After the vote, authorities arrested him. He was one of 100 people put on trial en masse on charges of taking part in a foreign-inspired plot against Iran. A number of Iranians, including a former president, called the trial a sham. ...

The enforced silence of men like Khajehpour makes a powerful statement about Iran's government. It's a statement Ahmadinejad must contend with as he defends Iran before the world.

Khajehpour's release, of course, still leaves dozens of others in jail for raising their voices in protest over what they view as a rigged presidential election.