Iran has freed US citizen Michael White in a detainee swap for two Iranian scientists imprisoned in the US.

White, a US navy veteran, was seized in July 2018 as he visited an Iranian woman whom he met on the Internet. He was sentenced in March 2019, without any public presentation of evidence, to 10 years in prison for “security crimes”. Authorities said he had committed privacy violations and insulted the Supreme Leader.
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Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi said on Thursday that White, on medical furlough in the Swiss Embassy amid Coronavirus, was released after satisfying “private plaintiffs in a lawsuit. ““Islamic mercy” was granted “for his other crimes”.

Meanwhile, Mousavi confirmed that the US freed Dr. Majid Taheri, held for more than a year on charges of violating US sanctions.

Taheri’s lawyer confirmed that his client left prison “as part of an agreement between Iran and the United States that included American citizen Michael White’s release.”

On Wednesday, Sirous Asgari, a professor of material sciences at the Sharif University of Technology, returned to Iran after three years in detention on charges of fraud and theft of information.

Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif signaled in December that Iran was ready for detainee swaps with the US. Historian Xiyue Wang, held since 2016, was released at the same time as Iranian stem cell scientist Massoud Soleimani.

In March, French academic Roland Marchal was swapped for engineer Jalal Ruhollahnejad. Marchal’s colleague and partner Fariba Adelkhah is still in Tehran’s Evin Prison on a five-year sentence.

See Iran Daily, May 28: Tehran to France — We Won’t Release Detained Academic Adelkhah

Donald Trump praised himself without referring to any detainee exchange: “I will never stop working to secure the release of all Americans held hostage overseas!”

Trump did not refer to other US and foreign nationals still imprisoned in Iran. They include Iranian-American oil executive Siamak Namazi, seized in 2015; his father Baquer, a former UNICEF employee; and Iranian-Canadian-American environmentalist Mohrad Tahbaz, seized with eight other colleagues in January 2019.

White’s mother Joanne said, “My prayers are with the Namazi and Tahbaz families and the families of so many other wrongfully detained Americans around the world.”