Iran’s foreign minister says the plane carrying Iranian scientist Sirous Asgari released from the American jail has taken off from the United States.
Mohammad Javad Zarif wrote on his Instagram page that Asgari is now free.
The top Iranian diplomat said the Iranian scientist has been acquitted of the baseless charges levelled against him.
“We were making every effort to set the stage for his return home,” said Zarif.
“If he tests negative for coronavirus, he can return to Iran on the first flight,”
The foreign minister said Asgari will return to the country if he tests negative for coronavirus.
Asgari, a professor of material sciences at Sharif University of Technology, was arrested in the United States in the mid-2017. Back then, the FBI alleged the scientist had shared information about a project he had conducted on a sabbatical in the US five years before with his students.
US legal authorities then charged him with withholding information in the process of visa application, circumventing the sanctions, and transferring technology to Iran.
Asgari had repeatedly pleaded for his release since March, complaining about unsanitary detention conditions and overcrowding at the Louisiana facility, where he was kept.
Ali Asghar Khaji, a Senior Advisor to Iran’s Foreign Minister, stated in an interview with…
US President Joe Biden will meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of…
Israel is using evacuation orders to pursue the “deliberate and massive forced displacement” of Palestinian…
Mohammad Eslami, the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), has warned of…
Donald Trump wants to bring Moscow and Kyiv to the negotiating table to end the…
The Commander-in-Chief of the Iranian Army, Major General Seyyed Abdolrahim Mousavi, has vowed a decisive…