Canadian journalist and Newsweek correspondent Maziar Bahari is seen in a 2007 photo.
Friends and colleagues of Canadian journalist Maziar Bahari are greeting news of his release from a Tehran prison with cautious enthusiasm, saying they will rejoice once the Iranian-born reporter has left the country and rejoined his expectant wife.
Canada's Foreign Affairs Minister, Lawrence Cannon, confirmed in a news release on the weekend that Mr. Bahari had been released on bail. The 42-year-old correspondent for Newsweek and former Montreal resident was arrested in late June shortly after protests stemming from Iran's disputed presidential election turned violent.
Mr. Bahari's British wife, Paola Gourley, is scheduled to undergo a caesarean section at London's University College Hospital on Oct 26. She could not be reached for comment Sunday, but in his news release Mr. Cannon expressed hope that Mr. Bahari "will soon be able to join his wife for the birth of their first child."
Mr. Bahari's current whereabouts are not publicly known, and it is unclear when he was allowed to leave Tehran's Evin Prison, the infamous facility where Canadian-Iranian journalist Zahra Kazemi was taking photographs in 2003 before she was arrested, and later killed in custody.
"I hope he gets out of the country as soon as possible," said Nazila Fathi, a journalist who covered Iran's post-election uprising for The New York Times and has worked closely with Mr. Bahari.
In a statement, Newsweek said that the reporter was now "home with his family." Mr. Bahari's mother lives in Tehran.
Mr. Bahari, who spent about a decade in Canada before returning to Iran in the late 1990s, has produced many documentaries for a number of broadcasters, including the CBC and the British Broadcasting Corp. His subject matter has ranged from Jews who were denied entry to the United States after fleeing Nazi Germany, to what daily life is like for women in Iran.
He filed regular reports to Newsweek during the turbulent period in June, when the world turned its attention to Iran and its efforts at implementing democracy.
His colleagues say Mr. Bahari is unflinchingly fair in his coverage. Ms. Fathi pointed to a documentary that Mr. Bahari produced before the election which profiled a religious figure who was prosecuted and hanged by the Iranian government after he murdered prostitutes. The documentary showed that the Iranian government was serious about cracking down on those who abuse the less fortunate in Iran, Ms. Fathi said.
"Maziar's arrest, for the government, was the biggest mistake, because he was a professional reporter, and it sent a very bad message - a signal to all the other stringers and reporters who worked for the foreign media in Iran … He didn't do anything wrong. He was working with government credentials, and it will take a long time for them to make people forget about that," said Ms. Fathi, who attended university in Toronto and recently returned to the city from Tehran.
"It was after [his arrest]that I left the country, and I don't know anyone else in the country. None of the other dual citizens, Iranian-Americans, Iranian-Canadians, are going to go back... It's going to take a while for the government to secure our confidence."
Reported to have been trotted out before a group of Iranian journalists in August, Mr. Bahari was said to have appealed for forgiveness while admitting it was the policy of the Western media to stoke anger over the election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Ms. Fathi said she was skeptical of the quasi-confession. "Everyone knows they are extracted under a lot of pressure," she said.
Greg McArthur