Tehran: Iranian authorities have freed five men, including reformist journalists and aides of opposition leaders, on bail after some of them paid hefty sureties, an opposition website reported late Sunday.
Abdollah Momeni, Mehdi Forzandehpour, Ehsan Mehrabi, Akbar Montajabi and Vahid Pourostad were behind bars after they were detained as part of a crackdown on supporters of opposition leaders.
Momeni, a top reformist student activist and an aide to opposition leader Mehdi Karroubi, has been sentenced to six years in jail but was granted five days' prison leave on bail of USD 800,000, his lawyer said.
Momeni has been in custody for eight months and in November his wife reportedly said he was charged with participating in anti-government protests which erupted after the disputed re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in June last year.
Forozandehpour, an aide of the main opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, was released after paying unspecified bail, opposition website Rahesabz.net said.
He had been in custody for two months.
Reformist journalists Mehrabi, Montajabi and Pourostad were also released. The website gave no details of the bail conditions.
PTI
First Published: Monday, March 08, 2010, 15:38