British prof returns home from Iran after release

LONDON, Dec 25 (BBC): A British-Iranian academic who was arrested and detained in Iran on security charges has returned to the UK, the Foreign Office has confirmed.

Prof Abbas Edalat, who works at Imperial College London, was detained in Tehran in April.

The Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran said he was released last week.

British-Iranian charity worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe remains in prison in Iran, where she has been since 2016.

Prof Edalat - who specialises in computer science and mathematics - was reportedly attending an academic workshop in Iran on 15 April when he was detained.

At the time of his arrest, an Iranian news agency reported that Prof Edalat was part of a "network" of British spies whose members had been identified and arrested.

Prof Edalat founded anti-war protest group CASMII, which opposes sanctions in Iran.

The group said: "It increasingly appears, as we had suspected, that his detention in spring in Iran was a case of misinformation and misunderstanding by the Iranian security apparatus."