Iran sought to close a controversial chapter involving a group of Iranian Jews jailed nearly three years ago for spying for Israel, with the foreign minister announcing that all those convicted are now free.
"Those among our Jewish compatriots who were in prison in Shiraz are now free," said Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi Thursday, the first official to confirm the last five of the 10 Jews convicted in July 2000 were now out of prison.
"We hope in the future we will not see such reprehensible activities that lead to imprisonments," he added in the announcement at a press conference with visiting French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin, who thanked him for the "good news".
In 1999, 13 Iranian Jews and eight Muslims were arrested in the southern city of Shiraz on charges of operating a spy ring for Iran's arch-enemy Israel.
In July 2000, a closed-door hardline Islamic revolutionary court sentenced 10 of the Jews and two of the Muslims to jail terms of between four and 13 years.
Once the case became public, Iran was bombarded with criticism from rights groups and foreign governments who alleged that the case was politically motivated.
But the Islamic republic denounced foreign criticism as interference in its internal affairs, while reformist President Mohammad Khatami and other top officials stressed the independence of Iran's courts and said the religion of the defendants had nothing to do with the charges.
But the United States said the trial was "completely without due process, completely without any openness and completely without any sort of international standards", and demanded the guilty verdicts be overturned.
And the Jews' defence team said it had been pressured by court officials to admit its clients were indeed spies.
In September 2000, an appeals court reduced their sentences and two of the 12 were freed as they had served out their terms.
Three more were released last October under a pardon from supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to mark a Shiite religious commemoration.
However the fate of the last five Jews remained uncertain, even though they had benefitted from home leave. Kharazi did not say whether the five had been pardoned or released on parole, a option that had been suggested last year.
In February, Louis Joinet, the head of United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, said the five had been definitively released but not yet officially told so, while last week judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Elham was quoted as saying in Iranian dailies that the five were still in prison.
The president of Iran's Jewish Association, Haroun Yashayayi, told AFP Thursday that the five were on indefinite "home leave", while other Jewish community sources here said the group had in effect been free since February but had yet to receive formal notification that they did not have to return to jail.
Iran has the Middle East's largest Jewish community outside Israel, albeit a minority that has significantly declined in numbers since the 1979 Islamic revolution. Most of the community lives in Shiraz, Tehran and Isfahan.
Israel, which Iran refuses to recognise, denied that the men were spying for the Jewish state.