"Iranian authorities continue to unjustly detain and imprison U.S. citizens, particularly Iranian-Americans, including students, journalists, business travelers, and academics, on charges including espionage and posing a threat to national security," it advised.
A similar deal was suspected when a French academic, Clotilde Reiss, who had been accused of espionage during the street protests that erupted after the disputed re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was released in May.
China attempted to smooth matters over by releasing three academics with American ties, all accused of espionage, just ahead of Mr Powell's arrival.
TEHRAN, Aug. 12 — A senior judiciary official said Sunday that Iran had finished its investigation into two Iranian-American academics who were arrested in May on espionage charges, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported.
Judge Salavati also oversaw the trial of a French academic, Clotilde Reiss, who was arrested and accused of espionage during the first days of postelection protests.
The life of the historian Hugh Trevor-Roper, later Lord Dacre, is a series of great stories, from many genres: the academic novel (dissolute Etonians and scheming fellows); the espionage thriller (his investigation of Hitler's death); and the journalistic farce (the Hitler-diaries scandal).
For China to snatch our academics and put them on show trials for espionage may be dismaying.
Our two main suspects for this are high-level industrial espionage against Siemens and a kind of academic experiment".
French President Nicolas Sarkozy is working to secure the release of French academic Clotilde Reiss, who is standing trial in Tehran on espionage charges.
When a colleague of mine, Igor Sutyagin, a researcher at a Moscow academic institute, was arrested eight months ago on charges of treason and espionage, the F.S.B. promptly classified his case.
