The Free Haleh campaign is pleased to share the news with thousands of supporters that Haleh is at last able to go home. The Washington Post reports:

Washington scholar Haleh Esfandiari was allowed to leave Tehran early this morning, ending an eight-month saga of imprisonment and virtual house arrest that heightened tense relations between the United States and Iran.

Esfandiari flew to Austria, where she was to be met by her husband, Shaul Bakhash, a George Mason University historian. “I’m elated that Haleh has been freed to come back home,” Bakhash said in a telephone interview from Vienna before she arrived.

But the legal status of Esfandiari, who directs Middle East programs at the Smithsonian’s Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, remains unclear. “As far as I know, she was not told whether there are any conditions attached to her release,” said Bakhash…

Esfandiari called her husband Saturday morning to report that she had been given an Iranian passport, Bakhash said. She then had to wait a day to get a visa for Austria, where her sister lives. She will rest in Europe before returning to her Potomac home, her husband said. The family is not saying when she will return to the United States.

Esfandiari’s daughter, Haleh Bakhash, said her mother was relieved to be allowed to leave Iran. “When I talked to her before she left, she was elated. I’m very excited,” she said. “I’m relieved that the ordeal is over and finally all of us in the family can get more than two or three hours of sleep a night. We’re relieved that this has come to a happy conclusion.”

There is still no news, however, on the status of four other Americans either detained or missing in Iran. New York-based social scientist Kian Tajbakhsh and California businessman Ali Sharkeri are in solitary confinement in Evin Prison. Both were picked up in the same three-day period in early May when Esfandiari was arrested.

More updates to come…