Iran has freed two German reporters held since October after commuting a jail term to 50,000-dollar fines on grounds of "Islamic compassion," state media announced on Saturday. "The two accused detained in Tabriz have been released and are departing for their home country," said Malek Ajdar Sharifi, the judiciary chief of East Azerbaijan in northern Iran, quoted by the official news agency IRNA.
The German foreign ministry said it hoped Marcus Hellwig and Jens Koch would soon be "under the protection of the embassy in Tehran." IRNA also reported that German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle was due to land later on Saturday in Tehran, although there was no immediate confirmation from Berlin of the visit.
An Iranian court sentenced the German journalists to 20 months in prison for acting against "national security" but then commuted the sentence to fines of around 50,000 dollars (36,500 euros) each, ISNA news agency said. The pair work for Bild am Sonntag and were arrested on October 10 in the north-western city of Tabriz for interviewing the son and lawyer of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, a woman sentenced to death by stoning for adultery.
Quoting a judiciary statement, ISNA said trial hearings were held for the two men. After "examining the accusation of acting against national security, they were sentenced to a 20-month jail term," it said. "But because of their special situation and, it is clear that they were used by one of the others accused in this case, it was felt that they deserved Islamic compassion," the statement read, without elaborating.
It said the verdicts were commuted to the fines. At the end of January, Iran's Mehr news agency quoted prosecutor general Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejeie as saying the pair had entered the Islamic republic as tourists and been arrested because in fact they were reporters.
"They have accepted that their work was illegal," he said. Iran had accused the Germans of having links with an "anti-revolutionary group" and said they had not obtained a special government permit to work in the country, usually required of foreigners. German Deputy Foreign Minister Wolf-Ruthart Born travelled to Tehran in January to discuss the case, Bild am Sonntag reported at the time. Also in January, Iran's Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi demanded "apologies" over the incident from the Axel Springer group which owns the mass-circulation newspaper.
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